Actorserf

Just Cause I Can

2008-06-24T08:56:00.001-04:00

Haven't done any of these in a while:

You Are a Crocodile

You are incredibly wise and knowledgeable.

In fact, your wisdom is so deep that it sometimes consumes you.

People are intrigued by you, but you find few people intriguing.

You are not a very social creature.

You are cunning. You enjoy deceiving people a little.

You are able to find balance in your life, and you can survive anything.

What Reptile Are You?

You Are a Chocolate Shake

You are a total hedonist. You are drawn to pleasure.

You are an expressive, over the top person. You're naturally dramatic.

You're the type of person who always chooses quality over quantity.

Life's too short to not have optimal experiences. You're proud of being picky.

What Flavor Shake Are You?

The Storm Before the Calm

2008-06-05T15:21:00.002-04:00

Sooo...what's been going on? Not much, really. Getting married, buying an apartment, moving out, moving in. Shot two national spots last year, appeared in one play, working on a cabaret-style show, cut my hair (though I need to get it cut again now, funny how hair keeps growing).

That's about it.

It's sort of funny how all the New York bloggers I keep tabs on fell silent all at once, as if by some prearranged signal. Are any of you guys out there still? Drop me a line if you are. Or have they moved on to Twitter? I'll admit, I took a look at it (and might play with it if I pick up a phone that can type stuff a bit easier), but the one thing I was left wondering was: how do you find streams to follow? Maybe there's a magic button you get if you download it that shows you people's streams.

And then, really, do I want to be Tweeting? It seems so pedantic, so very much like this, which absolutely terrifies me.

In some ways, I suppose this is the same trend that's been going since the evolution of the modern novel (Woolf, Joyce, Proust, et al); the elevation of the everyday. But when you're fed a steady diet of the mundane, your soul hungers for more; it hungers for the epic, the struggle, the black and white. Where are these stories? Perhaps truly great epics only come along once a generation, or even less. Perhaps this explains the Harry Potter explosion, a story which I would not necessarily refer to as great, but one which is decent and entertaining, and certainly has many of the hallmarks of an epic (aside from 200 some-odd-pages of, "They're in the woods...they're still in the woods...there's still in the woods...nope, not out yet...OMGIT'SRONNOWTHEYCANLEAVETHEWOODS," which I suppose is comparable to, "Frodo and Sam have made it to Mordor...it's really hot...there's nothing to drink...they're really tired...and hot...and thirsty...now they're tired, hot and thirsty...man that ring is heavy...OMGHAIGOLLUM," but I tend to flip really quickly through that part, too).

On that note, I think that this is something I will be trying out this year.

I suppose I will flesh out some more details of my news at the top of this post another time. If I feel like it/get people asking about it.

Still Alive

2008-01-09T00:53:00.000-05:00

Books? Who reads books?

1. Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
2. Falling Man, Don DeLillo
3. The Best of H.P. Lovecraft, H. P. Lovecraft

I'll try to be more interesting tomorrow.

Star Light, Star Bright...

2007-07-06T13:34:00.000-04:00

1. The Rebel Sell: Why the culture can't be jammed, Joseph Heath & Andrew Potter
2. The Complete Grimm's Fairy Tales, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm
3. Rabbit, Run, John Updike
4. Everything is Illuminated, Jonathan Safran Foer
5. Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser
6. Middlemarch, George Eliot
7. The Code of the Woosters, P. G. Wodehouse
8. The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho
9. Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
10. Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World, Jack Weatherford
11. Let Us Compare Mythologies, Leonard Cohen
12. The Sandman: The Wake, Neil Gaiman
13. The Sandman: Season of Mists, Neil Gaiman
14. The Dark Knight Returns, Frank Miller
15. The Sandman: The Doll's House, Neil Gaiman
16. The Sandman: The Kindly Ones, Neil Gaiman
17. Underworld, Don Delillo
18. The Sandman: Fables and Reflections, Neil Gaiman
19. The Sandman: Brief Lives, Neil Gaiman
20. Robert Kennedy and His Times, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr
21. The Sandman: Preludes and Nocturnes, Neil Gaiman
22. The Sandman: Dream Country, Neil Gaiman
23. The Sandman: A Game of You, Neil Gaiman
24. The Sandman: World's End, Neil Gaiman
25. The Sandman: Endless Nights, Neil Gaiman
26. The Dark Knight Strikes Again, Frank Miller
27. Book of Longing, Leonard Cohen
28. Different Seasons, Stephen King
29. Siddhartha, Hermann Hesse
30. The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ralph Waldo Emerson
31. Moneyball, Michael Lewis
32. American Pastoral, Philip Roth
33. Blood Meridian, Cormac McCarthy
34. The Fortress of Solitude, Jonathan Lethem
35. Steppenwolf, Herman Hesse
36. Orlando, Virgina Woolf
37. The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner
38. Kitchen, Banana Yoshimoto
39. Lizard, Banana Yoshimoto
40. Hardboiled Hard Luck, Banana Yoshimoto
41. Mansfield Park, Jane Austen
42. The Golden Compass, Philip Pullman
43. An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy 1917-1963, Robert Dallek
44. Neverwhere, Neil Gaiman
45. Bluebeard, Kurt Vonnegut
46. Stardust, Neil Gaiman

Stardust has been made into a movie which'll be released soon. It's an excellent book; Gaiman is one of (if not the, though of course any such proclamation comes down to personal taste) best living fantasy writers. American Gods and Anansi Boys are ok, but I don't think they're as strong as the more "childlike" stories: the Sandman comics with which he made his name and the novels of his which I've read this year.

Auditions here have been starting to pick up. Since returning from Europe I worked a couple on my own, but in the last week I've gotten 3 from my agent; two commercials and one movie. Nothing spectacular, but it's something - now all I need to do is get cast in one of them. Silence so far leads me to believe that I probably didn't get any of them, but that's the way the cookie crumbles.

Next week I'll be starting a class at the Professional Actors Lab. It's been some time since I've been in a classroom setting and had someone picking my acting apart. Kinda nervous, but confident; based off of what I saw when I audited a class there, I think technique-wise I'm a bit ahead of most people who go. This is a good thing, but also a bad thing, as it might mean I'll have more habits to fight against.

Canadians = Phone 'Tards?

2007-07-02T10:14:00.000-04:00

Since moving back, I have received, on average, 1 wrong number call per week. I do not seem to recall such a rate of calls in New York.

This morning, at 10 am, my phone buzzes with a text. I pick it up and read:

"Did u sleep well princess?"

It's from a number I don't have saved in my contacts, a 647 number (the newest GTA area code, which I think was added due to the explosion of cell phone numbers, Toronto getting its one after New York, which has 646 and which kind of confused me when I first saw the text because I thought it might have been someone in New York texting me. Anyways). I consider my options; hell, maybe it IS someone I know, someone who has a predilection for calling me Princess (which, I suppose, is not completely out of the realm of possibility). So I text back:

"Who is this?"

As of yet, I have received no response. I hope the anonymous sender is sufficiently chastised, and will, in the future, double check the number to which he is sending his sexy texts. Either that or LOSE SOME WEIGHT SO YOUR FAT FAT FINGERS DON'T HIT THE WRONG BUTTONS.

I'm not really angry about it, I just thought the caps looked kinda funny. Oh, yes, and happy day-after-Canada-Day. Hooray Canada!

Forgot One

2007-06-26T10:29:00.000-04:00

I Hate These People

2007-06-25T10:51:00.000-04:00

This is why you don't buy shit that has Mao's face or slogans, or Che's, or Stalin's. If you are not a card-carrying Communist who's willing to back up the rhetoric with real, violent dissent (in which case I probably don't want to know you, because you're scary), realize that people who come to power (and believe the only way to effective change is) through violent change have violent histories, histories which are not really all that far back in the past and which people feel very strongly about. Even putting the Peruvian Maoists aside, Mao is not the kinda dude you wanna put on a shirt. It's literally like putting Hitler or Stalin (though Mao might have killed more than both of those men through his policies) on your shirt and being all, "Hey, it's ok, it's ironic!"

No, it's not. And you're a terrible person. Every time you put that shirt on, a puppy gets its ears crushed by an automatic rice picking machine.

I say this as an individual who owns a shirt which has a sickle and hammer on it (which gets some interesting reactions from Asians and Eastern Europeans), but at least my shirt doesn't have a quote from Stalin saying, "Who needs Bolsheviks?" or something along those lines.

Bickety Bam

2007-06-20T10:47:00.000-04:00

So, yeah...been a while. First things first, an updated booklist:

1. The Rebel Sell: Why the culture can't be jammed, Joseph Heath & Andrew Potter
2. The Complete Grimm's Fairy Tales, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm
3. Rabbit, Run, John Updike
4. Everything is Illuminated, Jonathan Safran Foer
5. Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser
6. Middlemarch, George Eliot
7. The Code of the Woosters, P. G. Wodehouse
8. The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho
9. Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
10. Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World, Jack Weatherford
11. Let Us Compare Mythologies, Leonard Cohen
12. The Sandman: The Wake, Neil Gaiman
13. The Sandman: Season of Mists, Neil Gaiman
14. The Dark Knight Returns, Frank Miller
15. The Sandman: The Doll's House, Neil Gaiman
16. The Sandman: The Kindly Ones, Neil Gaiman
17. Underworld, Don Delillo
18. The Sandman: Fables and Reflections, Neil Gaiman
19. The Sandman: Brief Lives, Neil Gaiman
20. Robert Kennedy and His Times, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr
21. The Sandman: Preludes and Nocturnes, Neil Gaiman
22. The Sandman: Dream Country, Neil Gaiman
23. The Sandman: A Game of You, Neil Gaiman
24. The Sandman: World's End, Neil Gaiman
25. The Sandman: Endless Nights, Neil Gaiman
26. The Dark Knight Strikes Again, Frank Miller
27. Book of Longing, Leonard Cohen
28. Different Seasons, Stephen King
29. Siddhartha, Hermann Hesse
30. The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ralph Waldo Emerson
31. Moneyball, Michael Lewis
32. American Pastoral, Philip Roth
33. Blood Meridian, Cormac McCarthy
34. The Fortress of Solitude, Jonathan Lethem
35. Steppenwolf, Herman Hesse
36. Orlando, Virgina Woolf
37. The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner
38. Kitchen, Banana Yoshimoto
39. Lizard, Banana Yoshimoto
40. Hardboiled Hard Luck, Banana Yoshimoto
41. Mansfield Park, Jane Austen
42. The Golden Compass, Philip Pullman
43. An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy 1917-1963, Robert Dallek

The JFK book I'll be done soon. Next up is Harry Potter (once it comes out), then I have some Vonnegut I wanna read and then possibly some Shakespeare?

You, You, You...Not You

2007-05-01T03:43:00.000-04:00

So I ran "auditions" yesterday; it's in quotes because all of one person showed up. I must admit, out of all the things I thought might happen, such a complete lack of interest from the students was not one.

Thinking back to when my friends produced a play which I performed in, the summer after my first year of university, a few differences jump out. First, I was a year removed from high school; perhaps university students have a bit more free time? Certainly, the impression I got from the head of the drama department at my high school (aside from her being kind of a ball-busting bitch, but that's neither here nor there) was that kids's schedules these days are packed. I wonder if they were that full when I was in high school, and I've simply forgotten what it was like.

Second, the vast majority of those cast in that production had a personal relationship with the people directing and producing. I'm not saying that we were all the best of friends, simply that we were mostly known to each other, if not directly then by being friends of friends. I think this personal connection was vital in securing the cast, and is probably where I went wrong here. I might have been able to generate more of a connection with the kids had I been able to come in and chat with them. One of my friends suggested doing so a couple of times. My fault for not listening to his advice. It might not have changed anything, but it might have.

In terms of the production, I'm not totally sure what this means. The girl I saw today was decent. In need of some good, basic acting classes to make her aware of her physicality (as all actors are at some point or another) in order to more effectively channel it, but I can certainly respect her willingness to show up. It's been somewhat of a surprise, how little I've been able to squeeze out of my high school; I suppose it shouldn't be, as they have no reason to be bending backwards to help me. I've got this girl, who I could work with, but I don't have anything else.

As it is, I see a couple options: try to cast kids when I get back (probably not going to turn out any better than now, since they'll be just starting exams then and will most likely have set summer plans by that time), try to cast alumni, hold a more open call or push this project to a further date. The first probably isn't going to work, for the bracketed reasons. The second and third would work, but they lead to a question: if I'm not constrained by high school-age actors, why am I doing Skin? Why not go back to my first choice, This Is Our Youth, or another script which excites me more? The difficulty then is that I lose the built-in audience of school friends and family, but the head of the drama department pretty much dumped on my estimations of that interest, so I'm not 100% sure I'm really losing all that much there. The last option is fine, but it still begs the question: why Skin, and not another piece?

I leave for Europe tomorrow (well, tonight); I suppose I'll have plenty of time to mull this over.

Again With the Yellow

2007-04-27T21:51:00.000-04:00

Your Inner Color is Yellow

Your Personality: Life's too short not to have fun. Your bright energy brings joy and laughter to those around you.

You in Love: A total flirt, you need a lot of freedom to play. But you'll be loyal to that one person who makes you feel safe.

Your Career: You love variety in a job, and you probably won't stick with one career. You would make a great professor, writer, or actor.

What's Your Inner Color?

Just Another Manic Monday

2007-04-26T09:24:00.000-04:00

So, 10 e-mails (6 from me) and 14 days after getting in touch with the head of the drama department at my school, auditions will be happening on Monday, May 30th. How's that for cutting it close? Hopefully people will reply; it would suck if no-one was interested.

It's actually going to be interesting to go through the audition process from the other side of the desk. I've provided some sides for the kids, but have no idea what their cold(ish) reading skills will be like; the teacher mentioned that she's tried to emphasize the validity of the audition process in her time at the school, but that doesn't mean she teaches audition skills, just that she encourages everyone to come and try out. I'm going with a couple thoughts in mind: an idea of what I want to see and a couple different notes to give to auditioners to see how they handle direction and what adjustments they're able to make on the fly. Other than that I'm really trying to be as open as possible, not even thinking about what the characters look like. I have no idea what sort of talent or committment levels I'm about to encounter, and I'm trying not to get my expectations too high in terms of the former. Luckily, the play (being completely honest) is somewhat mediocre, being written for young audiences/performers, and not too demanding.

Loose Ends

2007-04-24T18:23:00.000-04:00

A week to go before I leave for Europe, and things are not where they need to be.

Over a week ago (at her request) I sent the current head of drama at my old high school an audition flyer with sides, asking her to get back to me with a more specific date and time. Since then I've been waiting...and waiting...and waiting.

Around the same time I had asked a friend who had registered a business when he helped produce a couple plays if I could use that business's info; the theatre I'm hoping to use charges first time renters a reservation fee which is several hundred dollars higher than if you've rented previously. This fee is credited towards your eventual rental bill, but anything which reduces up-front costs is a good thing. Since then I've been waiting for him to dig it up and send me the info, along with any information he might still have about donors. He mentioned the majority of their funding along those lines came from personal donations, which is something I'll probably be doing as well; if I can get $100 from 20 people (or some variation thereof like $50 from 40), that'll pretty much cover my rehearsal costs.

The school's going through a lot of construction, so I won't be able to use any space there for rehearsals. I've identified a couple alternatives which are actually better (read: cheaper), so that's fine, but lacking the business number I'm unable to actually go ahead and reserve anything. This has placed me in this state of perpetual waiting, which sucks.

The auditions are what's really worrying me, though. I can take care of reserving space out of the country; what I can't do is see these kids, and the lack of reply to this point worries me. I mean, I understand she's a teacher and all, but shit. How long does it really take to figure this stuff out?

But Wait, I'm...

2007-04-18T16:50:00.000-04:00

So, the media frenzy begins.

There's been an odd number of stories about Koreans expressing their extreme sorrow and apologies.

I mean, it's fine and all - certainly I'm not suggesting that it's stupid for those people to express their condolences - but there's something about it that's a little odd.

It's the obsession that Koreans have with the fact that the shooter himself was Korean ("Along with profound grief for the victims and concern for Cho's family, many expressed fear that his actions would tar the entire Korean American community -- which has long been associated with such values as hard work, education and family unity."). I don't think there's any added shame because of the shared nationality. Remember all the stories after 9/11 about Sikhs and other non-Muslim Arab or Pakistani people getting harassed? Bigots aren't too finicky. Say the shooter was Chinese, and some people were harassing a Korean. Are they gonna stop when the guy goes, "Wait, wait, I'm a Korean!" Conversely, given this situation, if some Chinese or Japanese person is getting bothered, I hardly think the fact that they're not Korean is going to help. Asians all look the same to Westerners, after all, right?.

Second, as details begin to emerge, it's clear that this is a very weak case for pro-gun control people. Cho bought his guns early this year; the .22 on February 9th and the 9 mm a month later, on March 16th (per this article). And while advisors and students are all coming out of the woodwork to say what a creepy guy he was (as they always do, after such an event), he had no background, no history of violent acts, nothing that would have raised any sort of flag. Aside from a complete ban on handgun purchases, I cannot think of any gun registration law which might have prevented this. And even given a ban, it's possible that he might have been able to acquire two or more handguns illegally. In fact, from what I know of gun enthusiasts, that's part of the argument which they use to justify the purchases of guns for security; criminals will acquire them illegally, so citizens should be able to purchase them legally for their own defense.

Lost in the shuffle of this is the news that the Supreme Court upheld a 2003 legislative ban on partial-birth abortions. I'm not gonna get all crazy (as I'm sure both abortion-rights and anti-abortion activists are) about how this is the beginning of the end of legalized abortion in the US, but it's certainly a situation that people should keep aware of.

Everyone Hates Toronto?

2007-04-16T17:51:00.000-04:00

An amusing/interesting editorial over here, in response to a documentary released this week about the virulent hatred the rest of Canada bears for Toronto and its denizens.

It's amusing because anyone who's spent time in any of the true metropolises of the world has somewhat of the same perspective on Toronto that Torontonians have on the rest of Canada. Toronto's a nice city, don't get me wrong, but compared to New York, London or Tokyo it remains somewhat quaint and provincial.

It gets interesting near the end, when the writer mentions:

Post-colonial studies teaches us that citizens of colonies (or, in Canada's case, former colonies) suffer from a psychological condition that causes them to constantly perceive themselves as being outside the centre, as living on the margins.

In the 20th century, it's interesting to note that a number of the more infuential Western cultural critics have been Canadian. Marshall McLuhan, Naomi Klein and John Ralston Saul are all fairly well known in those circles. In some ways, I think you can count comedians as cultural critics as well; most stand up comedy these days depends on some aspect of a common culture. Canada, of course, also seems to produce an inordinately large number of talented comedians. At the time, I found it odd that Canada could produce such a disproportinate amount of such critics, and tried to fumble my way towards a reason. Tying it to the colonial experience was something I hadn't considered, and yet it seems to make a fair bit of sense.

The dominant news story today is, of course, the shootings at Virginia Tech. When more details start coming out, I wonder what, if any, ramifications there will be politically. At this point it's silly to make any inflammatory statements about policy (not that that'll stop any news media outlets, I'm sure), but you would think that at some point, Americans might stop and ask how many such killings they will tolerate before legislating some sort of effective gun control, even if it's just a knee-jerk reaction to such horrific violence.

Of course, I suppose another way of looking at it is that the death toll in Virginia is like any given day of the week in Baghdad. But that's a whole other kettle of fish, and, to be fair, things do seem to have settled down some since Petaeus was put in charge.

Hmmm

2007-04-14T18:37:00.000-04:00

I could have sworn I'd done this one, but I don't see it in my labelled drawer, so:

You Are Expressionism

Moody, emotional, and even a bit angsty... you certainly know how to express your emotions.
At times, you tend to lack perspective on your life, probably as a result of looking inward too much.
This introspection does give you a flair for the dramatic. And it's even maybe made you cultivate some artistic talents!
You have a true artist's temperament... which is a blessing and a curse.

What Art Movement Are You?

I'm Super

2007-04-14T18:11:00.001-04:00

You Are the Super Ego

While some people may think first and act later... you often don't act at all.
You'd rather be safe than sorry, and you take ethics pretty seriously.
Like everyone, you have some pretty crazy desires. But unlike everyone, you restrain yourself.
You have high standards for your own behavior. And you happily exceed them.

Are You Id, Ego, or Superego?

Nepotism Rules?

2007-04-13T19:38:00.000-04:00

Had a good conversation with a high school friend of mine who I'd lost touch with.

Couple more details about my show: it looks like the performance space I'd been hoping to use is booked. I mentioned this today, and my friend suggested another space in Oakville which might even be better for my purposes, the studio theater at the Oakville Centre for the Performing Arts.

Part of the reason why I'd originally chosen the space at my high school was the hope that I might be able to get some sort of a discount on renting it. Interestingly enough, it turns out that my high school drama teacher is the Vice Chair of the board at the Oakville Centre.

I have connections! Who knew.

Mr. Darcy, I Presume?

2007-04-12T05:28:00.000-04:00

There are some people who are extremely comfortable talking to complete strangers, people who can sit and chat and instantly put others at ease.

I don't think I'm one of those people.

It is highly possible that this is a skill, something that can be learned through practice, repetition and personal reinforcement; certainly pick-up artists believe it is. It is also possible that there are some people who cannot learn it, or who will always be somewhat lacking, due to personal deficiency (for lack of a better term).

It's sort of funny that I posted a few entries ago about projecting our own personalities onto literary characters; the identification with characters in novels which personalizes them, which gives them an emotional and mental resonance in our own lives. Anyone who's ever read a book or watched a movie and thought, "I'm just like that person!" knows what I'm talking about. Because one of the things that struck me about Mr. Darcy when I first read Pride and Prejudice was his ill manner in the company of strangers, something which I (unfortunately) think I share.

It makes me uncomfortable to sit and chat with people I don't know; it makes me uncomfortable and nervous, and I'm prone to saying inappropriate things because of this (or just sitting silently), which leads to bad first impressions, which tend to be rather difficult to overcome. Maybe I just need to do suck it up and it more often, to push myself outside of my comfort zone, but doing so is - well - uncomfortable. Maybe I should just accept the fact (like Darcy) that I'm probably never going to be great in situations with complete strangers, and ask my friends to do likewise. Maybe I should get over myself.

Yeah...yeah.

Also, don't ask why this is posted at this time.

The Producer

2007-04-11T17:16:00.000-04:00

Things are happening.

A few weeks ago, after I'd expressed an interest in producing but also my extreme ignorance as to what producing entailed, a friend of mine passed along the contact info of a classmate we'd had in high school, a guy who'd gone on to do a bit of theatre producing in Toronto. I sat down with him soon after and we had a decent chat, getting generally caught up and talking about this and that. In the end, it came down to, "Do it," with a couple caveats based on his experience; for example, his friend (the creative part of the team, my former classmate being the business, organized part) was careful to select productions with a built-in audience, such as Rocky Horror.

I spent some time mulling it over and decided that I would, indeed, do it. I knew what I wanted to do; the same material I would want to be performing, if it was being produced. But fear and doubt set in. After all, I didn't (still don't) know what the fuck I'm doing.

The compromise: using personal contacts. I got in touch with my high school drama teacher, told her I was thinking about producing a play and would love to give either current or graduating students opportunities. She loved the idea, but not so much the script I had in mind (This is Our Youth, which has many, many naughty words in it, because that's the way kids talk, which is part of what makes the script so strong). Instead, she suggested Skin, which is written with younger actors and audiences in mind, and deals (in quite the fortuitous circumstance) with race and racism.

So, one Complete Idiot's Guide and a couple more e-mails to various parties later, I'm looking at something that might actually happen, that I will make happen. It's still embryonic; I haven't secured the rights yet, because I want to see the black box space at my school before I decide whether to put it on there or in the 150-seat recital hall (which I doubt we could consistently fill), and the size of the venue apparently helps determine the royalties you'll have to pay, and I have no idea where the hell I'm going to get the money or how much I'm going to need. But things are moving.

And I'm scared shitless.

Still Nerdy

2007-04-10T17:38:00.000-04:00

I've been puzzling over a recurrent theme in Underworld since I read it; at the time I tried to communicate it to a friend but it was pretty rough.

It concerns trash; a number of the characters in Underworld are involved in trash disposal, and Delillo writes about it on numerous occasions. I think what he's aiming for is an effect similar to The Human Stain, a meditation on the aftereffects of people's lives, the "trash" they leave scattered in their wake as they pursue this path, then that path, loving, hating and being indifferent towards those who come into their lives. And just as we don't think about the physical trash we throw away - the packaging around an iPod, the jar that peanut butter comes in, the plastic wrap around a cd or dvd - individuals are frequently ignorant of the effects they can have on people around them, both positive and negative.

It's not necessarily born out of any kind of malice or altruism (though it certainly can be); for the most part, it comes from a basic disconnect between individuals. People act in certain ways; they say things, they don't say things, they say things in certain ways, with certain inflections, and to their mind they are sending messages to those they interact with. But because others aren't privy to the specific way in which that person sees and interpret things, their actions (or inactions) are mistaken or missed completely.

Say you've had a fight with a friend or a loved one. Some time has passed, and you feel bad about what you've said or done to them, and want to apologize. Most people are too proud to come out and say, "I'm sorry," so they'll act in a manner which physicalizes these feelings. But the other person might not necessarily realize this, and they react accordingly. You, thinking that your overtures of apology have not only been refused, but explicitly rejected, become upset because of this, and the seeds of a deeper discontent are sown; not through any deliberate attempt but because of a simple disconnect.

This is the trash of human life: the sidelong glances, the unsaid words, all the insignificant details which mean so little to us and yet define us to other people, are the only things they have to judge and know us by.

Nerd Alert!

2007-04-09T17:13:00.000-04:00

Some literary thoughts that have been pinballing through my head.

I had a conversation with a friend a bit ago about change in Pride and Prejudice. And I'm not all that sure that there's much of it. I mean, I think part of the point of the novel is the extent to which people's true natures are misinterpreted, due to prejudices held by other characters (see how it all ties in with the title there? Spiffy!).

Really, I guess it's a question of what constitutes change in a person. Fundamentally, I think people don't change. What they can change are their opinions, but their basic natures remain the same. In terms of Pride and Prejudice, Darcy remains the same proud, moral person throughout. He likes Elizabeth from the start; even though he only refers to her as "tolerable" at the dance, in the subsequent scenes it's clear that he, in fact, finds her attractive. What seals the deal is her personality; her wit, her intellect, her lack of artifice. More than anything, it is this last point; Darcy is not the sort of character to be attracted by the typical female schemes - anything smacking of such sentiments would actually repel him, I think.

Conversely, for Elizabeth, what brings about the change in her opinion of Darcy is the fact that while he and his actions are mistaken, he remains steadfast and true to his own moral principles. Again, it seems unlikely to me that any man whose beliefs were easily mutable would appeal to her; she requires an equal, a man of forbearance and intellect to match hers. It is because their fundamental natures are so similar that they are both so suited and so antagonistic towards one another.

You Can't Handle the...Nevermind

2007-04-08T10:48:00.000-04:00

An interesting article over here about (what else) Iraq; interesting because it makes a couple points which politicians tend to gloss over.

Bush's supporters are big on rhetoric about staying until the mission's accomplished. But what does that mean, really? "'The time scale to succeed is years,' said John J. Hamre, a former deputy defense secretary, while 'the time scale for tolerance here is 12 months for Democrats and 18 months for Republicans.'"

Fundamentally, the biggest problem with the administration's approach to Iraq was that they believed that Iraq's dictatorship could be toppled and replaced with a democratic government in the space of a year or so, perhaps 2 at the most. They had to sell the war to the American people (and, to a lesser extent, the global populace) in the first place, so the rhetoric all centered around Saddam and how he was so dangerous that he had to be removed. Just as in the Plame case, what's most frustrating is that had the administration been honest, it might have been excusable. People make mistakes, and many things that have happened in Iraq could not have been easily predicted. But now you're looking at a 5 to 10 year process just to work the cycle of violence out, and politicians continue to suggest that America can simply send more troops to calm Baghdad down for the summer, and all the other problems - the underlying ones which drive the violence - will magically work themselves out in that time.

There are, to my mind, two major reasons why sectarian violence continues. The first stems from political discontent. I don't think extremists from either sect are convinced that democratic forms of power sharing are acceptable; I don't think they view the level of compromise required by most democracies to be possible or desirable. I don't know how you convince these people that it can work; religious extremists are not known for their flexibility of doctrine.

The second stems from the American presence in Iraq, and is driven mainly by foreign fighters, or largely influenced by them. As long as American troops are seen as occupiers in Iraq, as long as America continues to support Israel, as long as America maintains garrisons in Saudi Arabia there will always be those who use these facts as rhetoric to drum up support among the disaffected and disenfranchised. America is there, and America is vulnerable; not only militarily but politically, because toppling an American-supported government is the closest terrorrists will ever come to toppling America itself.

But instead of coming right out and telling us this is what is required, the administration stonewalls. They say we can't withdraw now, but don't even attempt to say how long they think victory might take. How can voters make rational decisions when the only plan given is, "Trust us"? What about the troops, those troops which politicians are always so quick to say they support, who are having tours extended, being called up more frequently, and having home time cut to shorter and shorter lengths? Don't they deserve to be told the truth?

Across the board, this administration has responded, no. The American people are not strong enough to handle the truth; indeed, they don't want to be told the truth. In terms of domestic politics, Bush's true legacy is not Iraq, it's the reclaiming of executive privilege which he and his staff have overseen. From his use of recess appointments to signing statements to the numerous confrontations with Congress over testimony from presidential staff and advisors, the Bush administration has pushed presidential power to levels that are probably pre-Watergate. And while they may be content today with their guy in the White House, they might do well to remember that once power is established, it is exponentially more difficult to get rid of it; and some day, the person in the White House might disagree with them.

pol·i·tics

2007-04-05T14:41:00.000-04:00

Returning to the dispute over Iraq funding.

The rhetoric over "pork" spending being added to the Iraq funding bill is both interesting and pointless. It's interesting because it shows how people will suspend their prejudices when things are in their favor or according to their own desires. It's pointless because it's nothing new. To wit: this story, noting that, "...such spending has been part of Iraq funding bills since the war began, sometimes inserted by the president himself, sometimes added by lawmakers with bipartisan aplomb."

For those who missed it, there was also a story a few days ago in the Times about a visit which John McCain and some other members of Congress paid to a Baghdad market, which led to McCain's comments that the liberal press was painting an unfairly poor picture of Iraq. In reply, rebuttals from the Washington Post and New York Times.

The thing is, McCain is correct to a degree. I'm sure there are many great things going on; in the worst situations it seems there are always acts of random, altruistic goodness (which get turned into Hollywood movies so we can all feel good about ourselves, but that's another post topic), and I'm sure progress might be being made outside and even within Baghdad, in terms of building infrastructure and whatnot. But it is somewhat difficult to ignore people dying and continuing to die in acts of premeditated terror. Wasn't the insurgency in its "death throes" a few years ago? Wasn't Al-Zarqawi the head of the serpent, and wouldn't the rest fall into disarray without him? Consider this, from the Times article: "'Every time the government announces anything — that the electricity is good or the water supply is good — the insurgents come to attack it immediately,' said Abu Samer, 49, who would give only his nickname out of concern for his safety."

You cannot win a fight against an insurgent or guerilla force with a purely military operation. There has to be a political element, because you have to win hearts and minds. And the point when the Americans could have done so in Iraq is, in my opinion, long past. Throwing more troops at it might create the security to rebuild, but how long can America maintain those troop levels? 2 months? 6? A year? 5 years? Infrastructure (power, water, sewage plants and the like) can only be built so quickly, and what of the political processes? Yeah, wow, they voted. People are so happy! They have a democracy! There's no reason for anyone to kill anyone else anymore!

It is somewhat horrible to say, but if the US wanted to rebuild Iraq as they did Japan and Germany after the Second World War, they actually should have done more damage during the invasion. Only out of such physical, emotional and mental devastation will a people accept such widespread changes forced upon them by another. And even then, given the sectarian divisions which didn't (I don't think) exist in 1950s Germany and Japan, the rebuilding process in Iraq still might have failed.

Spring, When a Young Man's Mind Turns to...Politics?

2007-04-04T17:07:00.000-04:00

So Dubya's all upset; it's kind of funny how this Washington Post article makes him sound like a petulant child: "He strode alone into the Rose Garden and complained that 'it has now been 57 days' since he asked Congress for more money for the Iraq war and still has not gotten it."

It's an interesting question; clearly, the legislative branches are well within their explicit, Constitutional powers over appropriations and funding. But there's a conflict in this instance with the President's position as Commander in Chief. You can't fight much of a war without money, so is Congress interfering with that perogative? Aren't generals always constrained by circumstances? If the administration doesn't get the money they want with their current situation, doesn't it behoove them to either work with Congress and convince them to give the money or scale back their plans so they're in line with the money they do get? Say, for example, they get half of the money they say they need for their current plans, and then they go ahead with those plans anyways, sending soldiers without enough armor (gee, where have I heard that before?), equipment and whatnot. Whose fault is it, then, if casualties which might have been prevented by full funding occur? Is it the fault of Congress for not providing the funds? Or the fault of the administration for sending soldiers out, knowing they lacked the proper protection? Who benefits from a political situation where both sides are like kids in a staring contest? Bush himself mentions, "'The Congress is exercising its legitimate authority as it sees fit right now,' Bush answered. 'I just disagree with their decisions.'" (quoted from this story) Isn't that a democracy? Man, it's too bad those Founding Fathers didn't think that maybe the legislative and executive branches might have disagreements from time to time. No other president's ever had to deal with a combative Congress, right?

There was a story a little while ago about a family who had lost relatives in both Iraq and Vietnam (as I'm sure many military-oriented families have), where a person was quoted as saying their relative had died in vain in Vietnam, and they didn't want that to happen again in Iraq. What is interesting is the notion that the death in Vietnam was for nothing. Why is it perceived that way? Is it because America pulled out of a situation which (to my admittedly uninformed view) was untenable, one which they arguably should not have been in in the first place? Or is it because America didn't "win"? Or did they? How's Vietnam doing these days, anyways? Those damn Commies won, right?

Right?

Hobgoblins, Politicians and Pomposity, Oh My!

2007-04-03T19:08:00.000-04:00

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul simply has nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words and to-morrow speak what to-morrow things in hard words again, though it contradict everything you said to-day. - 'Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.' - Is it so bad then to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.

I've heard/read the above quotations before (though the passage is usually distilled to the first and last sentences), and they're fine and all, but there is a troubling aspect to them as well.

Emerson is not saying people should change their opinions willy-nilly, depending on whatever they might be feeling at any given moment. He is not inveighing against consistent thought on the whole, but against a small-minded consistency for the sake of being consistent, for fear of not being able to explain yourself when others say, "But on such-and-such a date you said this." Consider modern politicians and their endless dances to avoid being caught in such a situation in the first place, and their awkward responses when they cannot ("I voted against it before I voted for it!"...what a schmoo). There is nothing wrong with examined consistency, just as there is nothing wrong with examined, honest variance (perhaps I should say there should be nothing wrong with it, since wide swaths of the population seem to feel otherwise. Not that that was the only reason for Kerry's loss). It is the underlying motivation which accounts for an individual's greatness, or lack thereof. One can easily picture people changing their beliefs every day, according to the prevailing currents of thought around them, and then quoting Emerson to justify themselves. Such actions are the consequence of mental laziness, of minds seeking justification for their own weakness, cloaking themselves in arrogance and pompousness. I mean, who the hell would quote Emerson today?

To be passionate, to be honest, to be sincere and empathetic; these are the things which Emerson asks of us. Yet how many of us, through misguided vanity, believe we are that which we are not?

Projecting Into the Past

2007-04-02T16:36:00.000-04:00

I've been rereading Pride and Prejudice, and (aside from it increasing my dissatisfaction with the 2005 film adaptation) thinking about a bit of literary critique in the introduction to the edition of Wuthering Heights I read, which identified Heathcliff as the perfect "other": a man whose past and motives are unknown, an individual upon whom others are free to project whatever they wish.

Before the advent of the modern novel (in general terms, the publication of Woolf, Proust and Joyce), the concept of the interior life of a character was less emphasized. External events and actions were the focus, from which readers were left to infer interior motive. In some ways, one wonders how much current enjoyment of classic texts owes to this fact, to the fact that modern readers are free (within reason, as dictated by the actions of the characters) to project whatever motivations they desire onto the protagonists. Modern novels which attempt to expose the precise inner workings of a character can be no less timeless or brilliant, but require a far more thorough understanding of the era and society which they are products of before one can begin to understand their characters.

For example, Elizabeth Bennet. A modern reading might identify her as a strong, independent woman: a modern heroine, unwilling to settle for a materially comfortable yet spiritually and intellectually dissatisfying marriage. Yet is that not modern, Western thought projecting its own morality into the past? She is an individual, yet it is only Western thought which prizes the individual above the collective, emotion over rationality; only in Western art is romantic love deified. Is it right of Elizabeth to be so contemptuous of Mr. Collins (admittedly, this is difficult to argue against), and subsequently, of Charlotte for accepting him (this is far less so)? And yet, whether or not it is right, it is true, and it is consistent with her character and the novel as a whole. As with philosophy, when reading fiction one must always distinguish between what the writer believes should be and is. And even if her actions weren't completely rational, the cardinal rule which one must always remember is that people are not consistent. People will frequently say one thing and act in a different manner; only in art do we demand purity of thought and deed before accepting a character as "believable," when reality and experience teach us otherwise.

Show Me the Money

2007-04-01T15:08:00.000-04:00

Rage Against...Something

2007-03-30T14:51:00.000-04:00

I recently watched the 2005 adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, which was kind of awful.

I had been warned that Mr. Darcy was somewhat...lacking in intestinal fortitude, which he certainly was. What's unfortunate is that interpreting him in that manner throws the whole story off. As it is, much of the book is compressed to fit it into the 2 hour time frame of the movie, so it's hard enough to comprehend why Elizabeth would love him. Granted, there are his actions to benefit her sisters, but Elizabeth's character is such (and again, this is only briefly established in the movie) that such actions, while laudable, would not be enough to win her love.

Of course, it's been a while since I read the book, which is why I went out and picked it up today. Maybe I'm wrong. I just kept waiting for a spark of something from Darcy other than sad, longing stares. Why would anyone feel any sort of attraction towards a mopey bastard? It's ludicrous.

It probably didn't help that I also recently watched When the Levees Broke, Spike Lee's documentary about New Orleans and Katrina, which is very well done and fills you with large amounts of inarticulate rage and sorrow. There are no words to communicate the disgust that such a thing could happen in the United States, but what is perhaps more worrying is the fact that it and its repercussions have been lost in the shuffle of Iraq. Where are the demands for change, for oversight, for some acknowledgement of failures and a transparent creation of plans for future emergencies? Is there even a fucking plan for the next time? Because, make no mistake, there will be a next time.

I was reminded, as I was watching it, of the night Dubya won re-election, when I turned to my friend sitting with me and said, "You know, it's horrible to say this, but you almost wish something terrible would happen to the US again, so they could really see what kind of person they re-elected."

People saw, but did they care?

Is This A Racial Thing?

2007-03-29T23:50:00.001-04:00

Your Psyche is Yellow

You have a ton of energy - both physical and mental endurance.
You are rational and logical, and you can help almost anyone think clearly.
Optimistic and bright, you also have a secret side that's a little darker.

When you are too yellow: You will do anything to get your way, and no one will be the wiser

When you don't have enough yellow: you lack confidence, drive, and humor

What Color Is Your Psyche?

Heights Which Wuther

2007-03-27T03:14:00.000-04:00

For various reasons, I've started re-reading Wuthering Heights. The first time I read it, I found myself focusing on Heathcliff's situation, though in retrospect that may have been because his dominates the latter half of it. I'm currently about halfway through it, and have come to realize that my initial impression of the flawed nature of Heathcliff's love might owe more to Catherine and her perception of it.

The true realization is this: Catherine's love is not a mature love. It is, in fact, a child's perception of love. This is not to say that it is good or bad, nor pure or calculating - perhaps more on that later. All I mean is that she envisions and conceives of love in the same way that younger people do. She says that "Whatever souls are made of, [Heathcliff's] and mine are the same," (81) - the sort of oneness which people experiencing love for the first time seek, not realizing that such closeness is ultimately confining and destructive. She displays a child-like assumption of primacy: "I thought, though everybody hated and despised each other, they could not avoid loving me" (122), and, in an interesting touch by Bronte, the form her ghost takes is not that of her at the end of her life, but her as a child, begging to be let back into the home where she lived with Heathcliff.

It is childlike to love in this manner because it's how you perceive love before dealing with failed relationships; it's the way you love before reality forces you to deal with people who don't love you, who fall out of love with you, before people tell you they've fallen out of love with you. Perhaps, then, this form of love is truer, is better, is more real. It's certainly simpler, and perhaps less satisfying in some ways, but moreso in others.

This being said, my enjoyment of Wuthering Heights is no less than it was the first time around. For while the love shared by Catherine and Heathcliff may or may not not be desirable, it is true. Would that we could all say such a thing.

Turn and Face the Strange

2007-03-26T10:58:00.000-04:00

A common presumption runs through the e-mails that whatever the problem, Future Me will have more courage, more power to act.

Lifted from an interesting article over here that lets you archive and send an e-mail to your future self.

I recently flipped through Moneyball, which attempts to examine the system behind Billy Beane's operation of the Oakland A's (baseball, for those of you who are sportily ignorant), and one of Beane's driving tenets is that people don't change. This is why certain statistical categories are better predictors of major league success than others; because the trends that a person establishes over their college career will continue in later life. Of course, in his case he's talking about their tendencies as baseball hitters, not trying to make some sort of grand statement about life.

I also stayed up way too late watching Unforgiven a few nights ago, a movie in which Clint Eastwood spends the first half repeating, "I ain't like that no more," but he is; indeed, it is all he is, as suggested by the very title of the movie - it doesn't matter what he goes on to do with his life, his past and his past identity will always a part of him. Externally he's changed, but the core remains, waiting to be called upon.

I'm sure there are all sorts of literary sources which point towards the possibility of change and redemption, but if we're being honest, what makes those stories attractive is the idea that someone can change, that people can identify and rectify their faults, which somehow makes up for any horrible things they might have done in the past, right? Perhaps the reason why people find those stories so attractive is because they identify our own fears about the actual impossibility of change and subsequent redemption, and assuage them with a fluffy little fairy tale about how anything is possible.

I know, I'm going out on a limb here, but it's been a while since I've written anything.

As a random aside, I feel pretty confident saying that Clint Eastwood gives the best reading of the word, "Yeah," in the history of cinema.

The Big Chill

2007-03-24T23:50:00.000-04:00

Been feeling kinda blah the last few days, which is why there's been a dearth of entries. Perhaps it's SAD? Whatever it is, it sucks.

I was out with a friend today, and the conversation turned very briefly to Pan's Labyrinth, which she mentioned she found disappointing because the fantastic elements were all make believe. I mentioned that her interpretation was more indicative of her own beliefs, as opposed to the intent of the film. I don't think she bought it. Still, she's the one stuck with a boring life view, so I suppose that's her loss.

Deep Thoughts

2007-03-18T13:20:00.000-04:00

1. The Rebel Sell: Why the culture can't be jammed, Joseph Heath & Andrew Potter
2. The Complete Grimm's Fairy Tales, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm
3. Rabbit, Run, John Updike
4. Everything is Illuminated, Jonathan Safran Foer
5. Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser
6. Middlemarch, George Eliot
7. The Code of the Woosters, P. G. Wodehouse
8. The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho
9. Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
10. Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World, Jack Weatherford
11. Let Us Compare Mythologies, Leonard Cohen
12. The Sandman: The Wake, Neil Gaiman
13. The Sandman: Season of Mists, Neil Gaiman
14. The Dark Knight Returns, Frank Miller
15. The Sandman: The Doll's House, Neil Gaiman
16. The Sandman: The Kindly Ones, Neil Gaiman
17. Underworld, Don Delillo
18. The Sandman: Fables and Reflections, Neil Gaiman
19. The Sandman: Brief Lives, Neil Gaiman
20. Robert Kennedy and His Times, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr
21. The Sandman: Preludes and Nocturnes, Neil Gaiman
22. The Sandman: Dream Country, Neil Gaiman
23. The Sandman: A Game of You, Neil Gaiman
24. The Sandman: World's End, Neil Gaiman
25. The Sandman: Endless Nights, Neil Gaiman
26. The Dark Knight Strikes Again, Frank Miller
27. Book of Longing, Leonard Cohen
28. Different Seasons, Stephen King
29. Siddhartha, Hermann Hesse
30. The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ralph Waldo Emerson

As I was reading through Siddhartha I actually found myself wanting something a little more serious. I suppose Emerson fits that bill; I'm sure in a week or so I'll be wanting something silly and fluffy instead.

Emerson is apparently referred to as a "transcendentalist" (whatever the hell that means); a champion of the sort of individualism which has come to be associated with the American spirit, which was then taken to its extreme by Ayn Rand and others.

One of the interesting things about Buddhism is that on the surface, it seems like a communal religion: love for all your fellow beings, for the plants and the rocks and the waves and all that hippy jazz. But when you find out more about it, you find that it reaches that level of community through a similar sort of individualism to that espoused by Emerson; that is, every thing, every creature, has their own potential, has something of the Buddha within them, and that's why you love them, because they are all Buddhas, all of them seeking their path. Obviously, Emerson doesn't quite put it that way, but the intent is similar. I read a passage recently talking about how everything is becoming, everything is evolving, even rocks; that perhaps copper is simply metal on its way to becoming something else, and when it's done being copper (though it may take millions or billions of years), it'll turn into silver, or gold, or whatever the next step on its path is.

I mean, it's a nice thought, and it would be wonderful if it were true, but it seems to me that there are many people who are not seeking at all, or who don't even know there's something they should be seeking, or are seeking the wrong thing. And what can you do? You cannot walk their path for them, you can't even make them see what they're missing. Life is difficult, and life is unfair. That is the way of things. I suppose that's why religions were created in the first place; though, of course, actual divine inspiration is entirely possible, and maybe when I die I'll show up and whatever god it happens to be will be all, "Ha-ha, don't you look fuckin stupid now."

2007-03-15T22:42:00.000-04:00

The most important things are the hardest to say, because words diminish them. It's hard to make strangers care about the good things in your life.

So, it turns out that the 4 short stories in Different Seasons were written several years apart, The Body being the first one, which is interesting because it's (to my mind) the best, and the most personal of the 4.

It's also interesting that the 2 movie adaptations I've seen (haven't seen Apt Pupil) are very accurate to the stories (from what I remember of them; it's been quite a while since I've seen them both). Well, maybe it's not that interesting. Maybe it's just kinda neat? A little neat? Not really neat and I'm a loser?

Green!

2007-03-15T22:41:00.000-04:00

You Are Emerald Green

Deep and mysterious, it often seems like no one truly gets you.
Inside, you are very emotional and moody - though you don't let it show.
People usually have a strong reaction to you... profound love or deep hate.
But you can even get those who hate you to come around. There's something naturally harmonious about you.

What Color Green Are You?

Huzzah

2007-03-13T23:19:00.000-04:00

Minority Casting

2007-03-12T18:55:00.000-04:00

I have an audition on Wednesday, for a touring show in BC (British Columbia) from April to June. It's been quite a while since I auditioned for anything, and they're also expecting a bit of movement, so I'm not really sure how it's going to go.

What gives me pause, though, is the fact that the play is based on a Native American legend - the legend of Raven stealing the sun, moon and stars, and I'm auditioning for Raven.

I mean, that's fine and all (the myth is neat, and I've always had an affinity for trickster gods, from Raven to the Monkey King to Loki to Anansi - come to think of it, isn't it neat how the motif of the trickster god is repeated so often, all across the world? I wonder what, if any, similarities exist between the various cultures which believed in trickster gods), but it is, to my mind, mildly (to say the least) insulting to cast anything other than a Native American in that sort of role. From a production perspective, I'm sure it's many times more difficult to find a young Native American actor than any other visible minority, simply because they have it so much worse than any other minority in North America, and grinding, institutionalized poverty tends to create more disaffected substance abusers than actor-types. But then, wouldn't that make it all the more important to find them?

It's silly, but it's important to me. Since minorities are given so few chances to share their stories with others, it makes it all the more important that those stories are presented properly. Granted, I'm closer to Native American-looking than someone descended from European stock, but still, there's something about it that makes me vaguely uneasy.

If This Is Groundhog Day, Where's Bill Murray?

2007-03-11T19:18:00.000-04:00

Later that month Tom Wicker asked him on Face the Nation whether, in light of the administration claim that the "great threat from Asian communism" made victory essential for the security of the United States, it did not follow that "perhaps we ought to do as much as needs to be done?" The United States, Kennedy replied, had originally gone into South Vietnam in order to permit the South Vietnamese to decide their own future. Plainly the South Vietnamese did not like the future held out by the Saigon regime. So we had moved on to the national security argument.

"Now we're saying we're going to fight there so that we don't have to fight in Thailand, so that we don't have to fight on the west coast of the United States, so that they won't move across the Rockies...Maybe [the people of South Vietnam] don't want it, but we want it, so we're going in there and we're killing South Vietnamese, we're killing children, we're killing women, we're killing innocent people...because [the Communists are] 12,000 miles away and they might get to be 11,000 miles away."

Quoted from the RFK book I'm reading, p. 824.

It is difficult, if not impossible, to make comparisons between any two geopolitical situations, but isn't it somewhat odd that you could change a couple nouns and arrive at a statement that one could imagine a senator saying today?

Bridge to What-the-Fuck?

2007-03-10T19:34:00.000-05:00

Just got in from Bridge to Terabithia. Honestly, it is possibly one of the most disturbing films (and thus, books) I've ever seen marketed to children. I'm probably going to check out the book at some time, just to know exactly how it's dealt with there, but...damn. There is certainly a niche there, but as a mass marketed tale? I honestly don't know.

About halfway through, I found myself thinking that all those kids in the movie (or perhaps just the chosen one or two) will soon become the next generation of Lindsay Lohans and Hilary Duffs. I found that quite sad.

Zooey Deschanel is also in it (though somewhat of a superfluous, cardboard character; I wouldn't be surprised to find that she doesn't exist in the book), and, as someone pointed out to me recently, she's really quite pretty. Or cute. Or hot. Or whatever you want to call it.

Oh Yes

2007-03-09T22:43:00.000-05:00

1. The Rebel Sell: Why the culture can't be jammed, Joseph Heath & Andrew Potter
2. The Complete Grimm's Fairy Tales, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm
3. Rabbit, Run, John Updike
4. Everything is Illuminated, Jonathan Safran Foer
5. Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser
6. Middlemarch, George Eliot
7. The Code of the Woosters, P. G. Wodehouse
8. The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho
9. Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
10. Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World, Jack Weatherford
11. Let Us Compare Mythologies, Leonard Cohen
12. The Sandman: The Wake, Neil Gaiman
13. The Sandman: Season of Mists, Neil Gaiman
14. The Dark Knight Returns, Frank Miller
15. The Sandman: The Doll's House, Neil Gaiman
16. The Sandman: The Kindly Ones, Neil Gaiman
17. Underworld, Don Delillo
18. The Sandman: Fables and Reflections, Neil Gaiman
19. The Sandman: Brief Lives, Neil Gaiman
20. Robert Kennedy and His Times, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr
21. The Sandman: Preludes and Nocturnes, Neil Gaiman
22. The Sandman: Dream Country, Neil Gaiman
23. The Sandman: A Game of You, Neil Gaiman
24. The Sandman: World's End, Neil Gaiman
25. The Sandman: Endless Nights, Neil Gaiman
26. The Dark Knight Strikes Again, Frank Miller
27. Book of Longing, Leonard Cohen

Still slogging my way through RFK.

I think one of the most interesting aspects of reading biography are the reminders that people are not monolithic. People are not always of one mind, and this may seem obvious if one assumes that to mean that people's thoughts and opinions change throughout their lives, but what I really mean is that it is possible to be of multiple opinions simultaneously. It is, indeed, possible to both love and hate someone or to be in favor of two things which seem diametrically opposed (anti-abortion and pro-death penalty, perhaps).

Is this rational? Perhaps not. Is this human? Most certainly.

What is perhaps most striking about great individuals is the particular way in which these combating impulses coalesce, which particular ones come to dominate at which points in their lives. One of the recurring threads of the RFK book (reflecting Schlesinger's point of view, from what I know of his work) is that individuals can make a difference, can identify issues and effect real, positive change. It is, perhaps, the most romantic notion of the book; a vestige of that time when all the problems of society seemed solvable.

I keep asking myself if I believe in that and I'm really not sure. Some days I do and some days I don't. Maybe I'm just making excuses for myself. Because if you do believe that's true, then you're left with the obvious question: what are you doing to make things better?

We live in a society (assuming whoever reads this comes from the developed world) where all but the very lowest members remain within the top 10% of the world's population, in terms of privilege, opportunity and well-being. I personally come from an even smaller substratum, in or about the top 10% of that 10%. And often I cannot escape the feeling that I am wasting it, sitting around and waiting for something to fall into my lap.

The List

2007-03-09T22:25:00.000-05:00

Just got finished watching The Prestige, which I had wanted to catch in theaters but never did for want of a buddy or the testicular fortitude to go watch it alone, a block which I managed to break through before leaving New York.

Holy shit.

HOLY SHIT.

It is, I suppose, somewhat presumptuous to have a "list" of people you really, really, really, really, REALLY want to work with. Well, call me presumptuous, because Chris Nolan is one of those people.

I love that his movies are challenging, I love that they're intellectual, I love that they're great stories, I love that he is passionate about his work and it shows, particularly in The Prestige, where magic is a obvious metaphor for the movie making process. Indeed, the mind-numbingly large number of people who create movies (you know, all those Oscars that nobody pays attention to, because the people who win them tend to be extremely untelegenic and have little or no stage presence, which is why they work behind the scenes in the first place) are the modern-day inheritors of the magician's mantle. Everyone knows that there's no magic, that the Victorian era is gone, that there's a man behind the curtain and blah-di-de-blah-blah-blah (that's a technical term, for those of you not in "the biz"). But there is magic in the minutes and hours when you can make those things live again, where people will forget reality and believe in something you show them, and follow you wherever you are able to take them.

It is not, in the final analysis, a great movie. But it is a good one, and an interesting one, which is more than I can say for the vast majority of Hollywood releases nowadays.

Some Things'll Never...

2007-03-05T22:57:00.000-05:00

I was recently informed of two things: that I dote on the women I become attached to, and that I'm far less entertaining when I'm sappy.

The person who said the former went on to say that it made me "safe," as far as women were concerned; that it was neither good, nor bad in and of itself; that it simply was.

Personally, I find that thought repulsive, all the more so because it's true.

One of the things in Sandman that speaks to me is the theme of change that runs through it, a theme which necessarily is found in any good story that spans several years in its telling. Morpheus changes throughout the series (indeed, throughout his "lifetime", as the series depicts him at many different points in his existence), but in the end is forced (or, perhaps, chooses) to face his limitations. And so, tiring of the struggle, he moves on.

I do not know if it is possible for people to change.

That reeks of such self-indulgence. "People can't change, so why bother trying?" I don't mean it to that extreme; as I've said in this space before, just because there might not be the possibility of wholesale change or amelioration, it does not follow that we should not strive to be better than we are.

In some ways, I suppose I do not want to change; perhaps that is the true problem. I've never wanted to be the cloying, annoying person draped all over a significant other in public, but when I care for someone I see nothing wrong with letting them know. I love fiercely and I love passionately, and I don't think those are bad things. They are somewhat nonsensical (I shudder at the use of adverbs, and hear acting teachers saying, "Show me 'fiercely,' you silly bastard."), but not categorically bad.

Still, it seems to be undesireable to project so much onto someone else, both for one's own identity and because it's unfair (not to mention annoying) to that person. I'm sure in my case it comes from my own specific circumstances and background; I could spend all sorts of time wallowing in a pathetic Psych 101 exploration of my neuroses.

I think I'll avoid that. For now.

Suffice to say I am aware of this shortcoming in myself, and am seeking a middle ground.

The End?

2007-03-05T16:12:00.000-05:00

Unfinished Lives

2007-03-02T18:50:00.000-05:00

1. The Rebel Sell: Why the culture can't be jammed, Joseph Heath & Andrew Potter
2. The Complete Grimm's Fairy Tales, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm
3. Rabbit, Run, John Updike
4. Everything is Illuminated, Jonathan Safran Foer
5. Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser
6. Middlemarch, George Eliot
7. The Code of the Woosters, P. G. Wodehouse
8. The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho
9. Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
10. Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World, Jack Weatherford
11. Let Us Compare Mythologies, Leonard Cohen
12. The Sandman: The Wake, Neil Gaiman
13. The Sandman: Season of Mists, Neil Gaiman
14. The Dark Knight Returns, Frank Miller
15. The Sandman: The Doll's House, Neil Gaiman
16. The Sandman: The Kindly Ones, Neil Gaiman
17. Underworld, Don Delillo
18. The Sandman: Fables and Reflections, Neil Gaiman
19. The Sandman: Brief Lives, Neil Gaiman
20. Robert Kennedy and His Times, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr

There's 5 other Sandman books which I haven't picked up yet, but which I'm sure I will sometime over the next month.

It's really an incredible achievement, though one wonders if it might have been better or worse with a more consistent art crew. Sandman is the only major comic from this period that I can think of with a rotating cast of artists; many of the others were both written and drawn by the same individual (Maus, Love and Rockets, Cerebus, Sin City), and while Alan Moore worked with different artists, his stand-alone works (Watchmen and V for Vendetta) are drawn by the same artist from beginning to end. I suppose, though, that as Sandman concerns itself with the Lord of Dreams, and dreams are always in flux, the rotating cast of artists could be taken as another commentary on the world that Gaiman created.

I mean, I'm sure he just happened to use different artists for each storyline, but it's possible that he might have thought it out a bit more explicitly like that.

The RFK book I'm really looking forward to. Early on, Schlesinger (who actually passed away a day or two ago) makes the point that what is so poignant about RFK's death is that he was still in the process of becoming, a process which he had been going through his whole life. There are glimmers of the man he was at the time and whom he was becoming, perhaps most famously in the Indianapolis speech (and if you don't know what I'm taking about, I demand that you watch the linked video, and promise you will not regret it), but we will never know whether or not he would have faltered in the years to come, what mistakes he might have made and how he might have responded to them. In some ways, perhaps he was too good, too earnest, too honest of a man to live; the perfect symbol of an era which started with such promise and somehow, some way, lost its focus, as its leaders dropped by the wayside, one by one.

Whiteout

2007-03-01T23:21:00.000-05:00

The snow sheets down,
Blanketing the world in pristine white,
Harsh in its purity.
People enter bathed in it,
Baptized by the cold and the snow, melting in their hair.

In nomine patris et filii et spiritus sancti.

Objects disappear, devolve
Into piles of pure white,
One lump
Indistininguishable
From another. The snow
Penetrates, it
Procreates,
Multiplying in nooks and crannies,
Covering all the hidden secrets of the world
In mute acceptance.
Turn your back for a moment and what you seek is
Gone,
Has vanished into a sea
Of white that numbs your hands as you dig,
Dig,
Dig, searching for your buried treasure.

And yet
In the cold
There is warmth,
There is a core of heat as old as the earth;
A cold heat that soaks into your bones,
That saps the strength and energizes,
That rebuilds and remakes you
In its own image
As it destroys what you once were.
And it is white

(so white)

All around, pressing down,
Penetrating
And pure, filling your vision and mind with
Ancient vistas,
Snowswept plains from the dawn of time
When gods were dreams.

It is a white of corrections, of
Failed impulses, of
Restarts and rewinds and redos,
Echoes of memories painted over and written over,
Forgotten
But still there,
Underneath it all.

A Place Called Vertigo

2007-03-01T18:14:00.000-05:00

So, What's It About?

2007-02-28T22:02:00.000-05:00

"Well, I didn't buy the object for the glory and drama attached to it. It's not about Thomson hitting the homer. It's about Branca making the pitch. It's all about losing."

"Bad luck," Glassic said, spearing a potato on my plate.

"It's about the mystery of bad luck, the mystery of loss. I don't know. I keep saying I don't know and I don't. But it's the only thing in my life that I absolutely had to own."

People have asked me what Underworld is about, and I find myself somewhat at a loss. To be sure, there are characters, and they interact, but I think the book aspires to something greater.

In some ways, this is irritating. Invariably, when an author sets out to write a "great book," said book reeks of their intent; it's a little embarassing, the authorial desperation. Still, there are certain things that can only be accomplished when character and plot take a back seat to themes and ideas. Whether these things are really merited or whether they're the equivalent of literary masturbation is an entirely different discussion.

I find it interesting that the three books on the list which I have read all deal with loss, are focused on people who have lost, rather than won; the dark side of the American Dream, if you will. And it's not loss in the prettied-up, Hollywood sense; redemption is rare and pyrrhic.

Perhaps this is natural, perhaps all art is inherently concerned with the notion of being outside; outside convention, outside the mainstream, the dark mirror for society. And yet, perhaps it only seems natural because we choose to conceive of art in that fashion, because we are drawn to the archetype of the lone, tortured artist plying his or her trade in an effort to reach out, to communicate, to connect somehow to this monolithic culture which they are unable to touch as an individual, which they can only affect and be affected by through their art. Perhaps much of this comes from artists themselves, so desperate to justify their own existence that they assume postures and personas to lend their art that air of gravitas, which makes it necessary and important.

The saddest thing is that the only true justification for art comes from within; people (and I don't think you need to or should consider yourself an artist by trade to create something) should create whatever they feel the urge to. If they want to write, write, if they want to sing, sing, and so forth. I'm not saying everything anyone creates is good, nor that this is the only reason anyone should have for making any kind of art; simply that this is the only justification that is, in the end, necessary. Whether what you create is any good, whether other people will enjoy it, feel enlightened or touched by it, is a whole other story.

Snow

2007-02-27T14:46:00.000-05:00

Snow is falling all around him, like fairies floating earthward in the service of some ancient god of rime and frost. "Hello," he says, as one settles on his nose, but she does not respond, she melts in silence. He takes a drag and hears the fluttering of wings in his chest, in time with the fluttering all around him. In the snowdrifts he sees her face, in the snow-heightened silence he hears her voice, and he smiles as fairies drift towards him, bestowing gentle kisses that he saves for her.

Old Town

2007-02-26T19:12:00.000-05:00

We walked that day,
Past cathedral bells and cobbled streets,
Down by the river of dreams.

We sat on a stone bench
In a pool of yellow light,
And in between our hands
I could feel our dreams
Coming through,
Coming real.

We were dancing,
Though we never left that bench,
In glances and smiles,
To that ancient reel
That every lover hears
Anew.

Milkshakes and cotton candy
Leaving sugary trails on our faces;
Wispy clouds,
The lightest touch,
A whisper of skin on skin.

I still taste
Your kisses.

A Snowy Day at the Bus Stop

2007-02-26T17:57:00.000-05:00

Perfume on the breeze
Sweet and cloying
Kills the senses,
Overpowering.

Butterflies flutter by,
Frozen in a moment
Behind a thin membrane,
Glittering with the light of dewdrops and coffee cups.
Doors open and shut
As the snow falls
And buses go by;
A neverending story
Of arrivals and departures,
Orpheus forever leading Eurydice,
Afraid to look behind him
But unable to stop himself.

Silent stops,
Empty receptacles
Where neighbors stand alone,
Refusing to acknowledge each other's presences
For fear or connecting,
Of being sent
Back to Tartarus,
Swept away on Lethe's currents,
A forgotten shade.
"Know me," they say,
"Remember me."
These ghosts,
These echoes,
Forever peering from glassed-in shelters,
Waiting for their buses to arrive,
Marking their lives by the 5:02.

Notebook

2007-02-26T17:26:00.000-05:00

Creamy paper under my hands;
An empty slate,
Waiting to be filled,
Waiting for me to cover you with my spidery script.

A blank page,
A challenge.
Satisfying warmth
In my hands;
Her hair,
Pressed against my cheek.

The pages start to fill,
And I run my hands over the bumps
Left behind by my pen:
A hungry braille
Defining her
Yet leaving her as strange to me
As she ever was.
This mystery.
This love?

Writings from the past
Leave their marks on the pages to come;
A forewarning,
A premonition
Waiting to be raised
By a rubbing.
The future,
In ridges and canyons,
Waiting for us to discover them
Together.

Crosswords

2007-02-26T16:30:00.000-05:00

Diamonds glitter in the light
As her hand moves across the page
Filling in the blanks of her life:
One across,
Five down.
Chin in hand, the clues fly by,
Answering themselves,
Ticked off the list,
One
By one
As the world passes her by.

She pauses,
At a loss,
Frozen in a moment;
Searching for the right word,
The one that will fit
And solve the puzzle before her.

Do You Believe In Magic?

2007-02-25T00:17:00.000-05:00

Saw Pan's Labyrinth tonight.

It was beautiful. Beautiful and terrifying, as many great works are.

I like to believe that there's magic in the world. And I don't necessarily mean spells and crazy ceremonies involving cool chalk drawings and baby's blood. The magic I like to believe in is far more prosaic, but all the more potent because of its ordinariness, its everydayness.

It is in the eyes of someone who loves you, in the way they touch you, in the shared glances and connections made and missed every day, between every person, in the daring to believe, to imagine, to aspire to whatever your heart desires.

There is magic there.

And it is frightening; of course it is, because there's no-one to catch you, no guarantees. Few can help you, and even fewer will understand you. There is only you and what you will dare, what you will risk, what and who you will turn your back on.

Imagination is painful because you must pay a price to hang onto it, and to follow it. Along your way there will be people who will delight in telling you how silly, how unrealistic, how childlike you are. There will be people, and they will be legion, who will tell you to put aside those things, to grow up. And many people do, and many people will. Perhaps they can be happy with that.

I hope I will never know.

Isn't It Ironic

2007-02-24T13:56:00.001-05:00

Don'tcha think?

You Are a Smart American

You know a lot about US history, and you're opinions are probably well informed.
Congratulations on bucking stereotypes. Now go show some foreigners how smart Americans can be.

Are You a Dumb American?

2007-02-23T21:43:00.000-05:00

Exit Light, Enter Night

2007-02-22T19:52:00.000-05:00

Et Tu, Blogthings?

2007-02-21T18:45:00.001-05:00

Sigh.

You Are 96% NYC

Congratulations, you are truly a New Yorker. You've seen it all, and you're more than a little cynical.

How NYC Are You?

Genghis Khan and the Making of My Booklist

2007-02-20T20:22:00.000-05:00

Happiness Is...?

2007-02-17T19:36:00.000-05:00

Vronsky meanwhile, despite the full realization of what he had desired for so long, was not fully happy. He soon felt that the realization of his desire had given him only a grain of the mountain of happiness he had expected. It showed him the eternal error people make in imagining that happiness is the realization of desires.

When you read great, older books, one of the things you need to get used to is the formulation of thoughts and concepts which have been parroted in the years since. Things which might seem obvious or concepts which we might have already encountered and accepted are at risk of being dismissed too quickly if we forget the context in which the original author wrote them.

I don't even know if Tolstoy was the first to express the above sentiment; he might have been, he might not have been. I definitely agree with it, though; it's a thought I've encountered several times and one which I can't find fault with. To desire is human, and yet achieving one's desires leads only to a new set of desires. This applies easily to physical phenomena: money, cars, houses and the like. But with relationships it's a little trickier.

Part of the problem, I think, is that people treat the people they have relationships with as objects, as static beings who will always remain the same. People act surprised when other people change, they cite it as a reason for relationships to end, when the reality is, everyone is always changing. Everyone, everything is always in a process of becoming. So by the time you "get" the person that you want, that person has changed, has become someone else. The only thing you've gotten is a shade, a memory of who they were a day, week, month or year ago. Worse yet, in pursuing what they were you are missing out on what they are, on the person standing in front of you.

I watched Bridges of Madison County on Valentine's Day (I inadvertently did a lot of romance-related watching that day, including the When Harry Met Sally commentary), and spent most of the movie pondering whether or not Meryl Streep's character was right - not to feel the way she did, since that can't really be controlled, but in the decisions she made. For those who haven't seen the movie, her character is married with two kids, and meets Clint Eastwood while her family is away for a week. They share a blissful, love-filled 4 days together, at the end of which he asks her to leave with him. She doesn't.

So one of the things I wondered was, is this sympathetic? Do I feel sorry for her character and her decision to stay in a respectful but loveless marriage and life? And in the end, I don't think I did; or perhaps it's more correct for me to say I don't think you're supposed to. Obviously, it wasn't a great situation. But she made her choice, and it was not a bad one; she stayed with the husband who had always taken care of her, who had always provided for her; with the kids she had raised, who she wouldn't have felt right abandoning. The point is made that loving Clint Eastwood's character the way she did was the only thing that allowed her to get through her life on the farm, that her perfect, unfulfilled love gave her the strength to stay, and that had she gone with him, eventually she would have come to hate him. Maybe the only reason she stayed in love with him was precisely because they were never able to be together.

It also makes you think - all those marriages that lasted for so long, how many of them were like that, in how many of them was at least one of the people filled with a secret identity, a secret longing for something more that they hid, how many of them had hidden thoughts that their partner never even came close to knowing? And I don't mean to suggest that you have to know everything about the person you're in a relationship with; in fact, I think there's (or there should be) an essential mystery to other people that you can never truly understand. But there's a difference between completely censoring a side of yourself and the aspects of yourself which are unknowable to anybody other than (sometimes even including?) yourself. How many people today live these sham relationships, pouring their affection into someone who doesn't exist, into someone they've created in their own mind, into some ideal they project onto the other person? What does it say about people if the only way the majority of them can stay together is through suppressing elements of their personalities? Is that even true? Am I being a bit harsh? I don't even know anyone who's been in a long-term marriage or relationship that I could ask these things to.

Poiple

2007-02-17T08:37:00.001-05:00

Your Brain is Purple

Of all the brain types, yours is the most idealistic.
You tend to think wild, amazing thoughts. Your dreams and fantasies are intense.
Your thoughts are creative, inventive, and without boundaries.

You tend to spend a lot of time thinking of fictional people and places - or a very different life for yourself.

What Color Is Your Brain?

Known Unknowns

2007-02-16T16:30:00.000-05:00

In the disagreements that occurred between the brothers during their discussions of the peasantry, Sergei Ivanovich always defeated his brother, precisely because Sergei Ivanovich had definite notions about the peasantry, their character, properties and tastes; whereas Konstantin Levin had no definite and unchanging notions, so that in these arguments Konstantin was always caught contradicting himself.

It's somewhat odd (or maybe it isn't; maybe this happens to most people who read the book), but as I read Anna Karenina, I find myself less and less interested in Anna's story - I think because it's an old story (or perhaps, to be more precise, it's a story which has been retold many times up to the present day), one which I feel familiar with. Levin, on the other hand, I find a fascinating character, possibly because he's the one I feel the most parallels with. He's supposed to be fairly representative of Tolstoy himself, according to the introduction of the edition that I have.

Yay?

I've never held many passionate thoughts or opinions. I don't mean to say I don't care about things, what I mean is that a lot of the ideas I have I'm willing to question or doubt, depending on whatever perspective I'm faced with or what I feel at any given time of any given day. I can argue something passionately one day and then say something completely opposite the next day. I think people who talk to me a lot find this intensely irritating at times. Is this intellectual, is it an expression of the knowledge that I know nothing, that there are no absolutes in life? Or is it human hypocrisy, is it just the natural tendency of people to say one thing when examining a situation in an objective, academic fashion and then act differently when their own desires come into play? Or some combination?

See, even now I'm unable to find a definitive answer.

I notice, when I'm in conversations, that I tend to ramble all over the place, that I'll mention something to try to illustrate a point and it sets me off on some other tangent, and by the time I finish that I've forgotten what the original point I was trying to make was. I had an acting teacher tell me that that, and my vocal patterns, were symptoms of a restless mind, that my brain's moving so quickly and so (to everyone else's mind) randomly that my mouth struggles to keep pace. I can focus on subjects and on single arguments - to write a thesis paper, for example - but when given the chance to do otherwise my mind tends to work in a far less structured manner. I don't feel that I'm particularly creative or inventive, I just have such wide-ranging interests and knowledge that they all compete to be shown off.

That makes me sound like an insufferable ass, and I suppose that's how I come across sometimes.

I also find it interesting that Tolstoy's style is far more polemical than his Western counterparts; where they had begun to move towards a more disinterested commentary on the characters in their novels (to give you an idea of where Western fiction was at this time, Middlemarch was written around the same time, 5-6 years earlier), Tolstoy's perspective and his beliefs are fairly easy to detect in the tone he adopts towards various characters and lifestyles. He certainly doesn't seem to have much sympathy for Anna, which makes the decision to center the book around her even more interesting, especially when many of the "secondary" characters are as if not more realized.

Scenes From a Cafe

2007-02-15T18:10:00.000-05:00

On the table, a chessboard
Empty of pieces,
Cold and barren.
Glossy pages reflect my life,
The tale written on my face.
Hissing steam keeps time
As it slips through my fingers.
Notice me,
Oh,
Notice me,
My hands beg
As they turn the page.

Papers, papers
Bulging from a file.
Tapping fingers:
A life line
Sending messages
In morse code.
File it away;
This day was brought to you by the letter, "P"!
This is how I spend my days.
...
This is important.
---
This is the truth.
...

Alchemy of the Soul

2007-02-14T10:05:00.000-05:00

That night, the boy slept deeply, and, when he awoke, his heart began to tell him things that came from the Soul of the World. It said that all people who are happy have God within them. And that happiness could be found in a grain of sand from the desert, as the alchemist had said. Because a grain of sand is a moment of creation, and the universe has taken millions of years to create it. "Everyone on earth has a treasure that awaits him," his heart said. "We, people's hearts, seldom say much about these treasures, because people no longer want to go in search of them. We speak of them only to children. Later, we simply let life proceed, in its own direction, towards its own fate. But, unfortunately, very few follow the path laid out of them - the path to their Personal Legends, and to happiness. Most people see the world as a threatening place, and, because they do, the world turns out, indeed, to be a threatening place.

It's been a while since I read anything so unabashedly romantic as The Alchemist; maybe A Hundred Years of Solitude is the closest parallel out of books I've read recently (as a side note, I find it somewhat interesting that Marquez came to mind, as he's Colombian and Coelho is Brazilian), although the quote on the back of the book jacket likening it to Le Petit Prince is right on.

It's a beautiful little book with a concept of a "Personal Legend" which everyone and everything has within them, waiting to be fulfilled. But people get in the way of their own desires, people find excuses not to follow the things that fill them with joy and enthusiasm, and wind up - perhaps not unhappy, but not as happy as they could have been. It is so easy to get sidetracked in this world, something I know from having seen all the kids who came out of theater school with me whittle away their time, making excuse after excuse about why they didn't audition, instead of just going out and doing it. And maybe that wasn't their dream, maybe they had to go through it to find out that they could live without it, but I can't shake the feeling that at least one of those people doesn't or won't regret that decision, or lack of decision.

When you have a dream, nothing else should matter. Not money, not family, not relationships, because if they are true, they will understand your dream and why you must pursue it. This might sound like a recipe for ending up alone at age 40, and maybe it is; but there are things you have to do for yourself, and let the other chips fall as they may. I like to think that improving yourself, that living in a way that makes you content with what you do and who you are, leads to more effective relationships; love without possession, giving and fulfilling. I could be wrong. But I like thinking that way, so I choose to.

Man, I really am a romantic sap. Pathetic.

Remember

2007-02-13T17:47:00.000-05:00

There once was a boy who loved a girl very much, and she in turn loved him. They were young, and they were happy, because they did not know any different.

The boy grew older, as boys do, and decided to follow his dreams to the city, where he could hear them calling. He promised the girl he would not forget her, and she likewise.

He went to the city, and every evening he looked to the north, imagining that the girl was looking south, that somehow, some way, across the miles between them, their eyes were meeting, that she had not forgotten him. And, indeed, there were many nights when she was looking south, towards the city, at that very time, and thinking of the boy, whom she loved so much. "Remember," the sun whispered to them as it set, and they did.

Time passed, as it does, and the boy stayed in the city. The boy and girl did not forget each other, but distance has a way with memory, not to weaken but to strengthen, to calcify it, set it in stone, cold and unliving. And love cannot be blamed for weakening in those circumstances, for love requires heat, is nothing if not the distillation of life. The girl did not stop loving the boy, but her love for him stayed still, like her memory of him, and other loves went rushing by. One day, one of these loves asked her to be his wife, and she said yes, for she loved him. But she had not forgotten the boy. She looked south, hoping he would hear and forgive her, that he had not forgotten her.

And he had not.

The boy looked up and to the north, with that feeling we all have at times, of unexplainable unsettlement. Things were changing, he knew, they were always changing; such was their way. But memory is constant, memory does not change, memory is all the little details of people set in stone, waiting just a step behind for us to turn and see them once more. He still remembered the girl, as he had promised he would, and he closed his eyes and smiled as the sun sank below the horizon.

Oh My Sainted Aunt

2007-02-13T15:33:00.000-05:00

The Sound of Silence

2007-02-13T10:01:00.000-05:00

1. The Rebel Sell: Why the culture can't be jammed, Joseph Heath & Andrew Potter
2. The Complete Grimm's Fairy Tales, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm
3. Rabbit, Run, John Updike
4. Everything is Illuminated, Jonathan Safran Foer
5. Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser
6. Middlemarch, George Eliot
7. The Code of the Woosters, P. G. Wodehouse

So Middlemarch was good - very, very, good, worthy of many hyperbolic adjectives - but there was something in there that interested me above and beyond its merit as a book.

It's funny to read books from that (the Victorian) era, and to realize how little society has changed since then. To be sure, women are allowed far more independence now than then, but when reading the conversations and the relations between men and women one sees the same mixups, miscommunications and plain lack of communication that can be found today.

I don't really know what this says. It's not a bad thing, I don't think, so much as it is unavoidable. There will always be words which miss their mark, which are said with one intention but interpreted with another, until the day when we're able to read each other's minds (and won't that be fucking terrifying, knowing exactly when that guy is thinking about sex and - perhaps worse yet - when he isn't). What is important is to talk about them, and to not let them just sit there, an open wound waiting to be prodded. Because that's what people (well, I) do, when they have imagined hurts or slights; future comments are reinterpreted with that bias in mind, with the thought that you are somehow lacking in that area, that the other person is constantly picking on your shortcomings. And that's neither fair to yourself nor that person.

My life and my relations seem to be characterized more by silence and the words not said than the things I did say. Something in me finds that sad. Sometimes silence is right and sometimes silence is good, but sometimes silence hides fear and shame and doubt. And how can you know when silence is best? How can you know when her quivering rage hides a need to be reached out to and when you just need to shut the hell up and go away?

I feel like my relations in the past have gone too far, that they've been silent too long and I don't know how to change them, I don't know if the other people involved want to change them. Maybe I'm just too scared to make them change. But I do know that in the relations I invite into my life now, I aspire to something different, to something more open. I'm not talking about wholesale apologies for anything and everything I can think of any time I think the other person's upset; that defeats the whole purpose of an apology. If you're not truly sorry about something, if you don't really think you've done something wrong, then saying you're sorry is even more insulting than saying nothing. But when someone is important to you, you owe it to them to try to see things from their perspective, to understand what and why they are feeling a certain way.

From time to time, I trample on a lot of feelings. I think it's another reason why I come across as arrogant; I sort of like to hear my own cleverness, I get caught up in discussions and don't necessarily consider how my words might affect the people I'm speaking to. I think I'd rather be interesting than nice. I mean, interesting and nice would be cool, and I think on the whole I am, but if I had to pick it would definitely be the former.

You can't ever know what would have happened if you'd said whatever you wanted to say unless you say it. Personally, I would rather err on the side of saying one thing too many than not saying enough. Words are important; they are the only bridges that can be built to link two people together, in any kind of a relationship.

Contradictions

2007-02-12T10:56:00.000-05:00

There's a little article about Jason Robert Brown and a recent New York performance of his over here, containing a little throwaway comment about, "his contradictory image as a cocky borderline geek."

I mean, that's me. Except I guess you can take out borderline.

I was having a conversation with some people a few days ago, and was telling this story about watching Love Actually with a roommate of mine, who was unaware that All You Need is Love was actually a song recorded far before the movie was made. But when they found out that the roommate in question was female, they went, "Oh, ok, it was a girl," which made me pause and ask them, what's wrong with two guys watching Love Actually together? I mean, what if one of us happened to be (oh noes!) gay? Or what if neither of us was, what's so wrong about two straight guys watching a romantic movie? Just because it doesn't happen often (ok, ever) and isn't "normal," that gives you the right to think less of me?

There is nothing I hate more than people who try to label others. I suppose everyone does it, and I am no less guilty than any other person, but I think there's a difference between likes that are quantitatively different (liking Paris Hilton and thinking she's awesome) and likes that simply demonstrate a different appreciation of things (liking Before Sunset). I think anyone trying to label me based on things I like or am interested in would end up getting a very superficial view of my personality, either as a terrifying nerd (should the conversation be about Superman or Batman or something), a boring film snob (if it's about 2046) or just a plan old dick (if it's about racial politics and identity). But isn't that the only view we ever have of people? Everyone has thoughts swirling about inside of them, everyone tries to communicate them and everyone fails, in the end, to display themselves to their full advantage, as a thinking, feeling human being.

Then again, maybe everyone doesn't deal with this. Maybe it's only myself and a (small or large) minority of other people who do. Maybe other people are calm and confident in their definitions, in knowing who and what they are.

Boxes

2007-02-10T18:44:00.000-05:00

Boxes, boxes, boxes. Isn't it funny how we pack up our lives in boxes; a year here, a year there, and at the end of your life you find yourself packed up, packed away, tucked in between the blankets and bicycles. He lifts the cover and runs his hands over the paper within, its yellowing smoothness slipping through his hands, like the past he is trying to hold onto, to remember. Faces with no names, names with no faces, people he can't even remember forgetting.

And then, her.

It isn't a good picture of her; she always hated her hair that day. But it's the only picture of her he has, the only one she ever let him take. In all the other pictures he has of her she is on the periphery, half seen and half invisible; a pair of eyes in the background; a ghost; a cipher. Perhaps that is why he still remembers her; how can you forget someone you never knew?

It's the look in her eyes that draws him to this picture, a look that has said everything and nothing to him at different times in his life. He remembers a time when he pulled it out and was filled with rage, with the urge to burn it, to wipe her out of his life as surely as she wiped him out of hers. But today he looks and sees only sadness. "Take my hand," she was saying, but he could not hear her then and can hardly hear her now, her voice echoing thin and tinny from a faded yellow photograph.

Feedback

2007-02-10T01:32:00.000-05:00

i'm honest about this kind of stuff, so i hope you're ok with that.

you're right, it is definitely emo (as i understand what that means), which means that i wouldn't really be part of the target audience for it. but, putting aside that consideration, i thought it had lots of promise. lots of interesting writing around images, and human touch. there are some nice intellectual flourishes, writing and structure. but it leans heavily towards syrupy, and it does need much more work.

i hope that's helpful, i'll talk to you more about this when we catch up.

So over the past while I've been considering actually trying to do something (ie publish, either shopping it around and entering contests, or self-publish and shill online/in indie bookstores/to friends) with some of the stuff I've written over the past 2 years, and decided to forward most of it to a friend of mine whose opinion I trust and respect. That's the first thing he's said to me about it.

He's got a good point, and I agree that some of them probably could use work, but I'm somewhat leery of losing the emotional honesty that a lot of the pieces exhibit. When I was younger and wrote poetry in class, the most frequent feedback I received was that it was a bit too contrived, a bit too intellectualized; it just didn't quite bring the reader along. I don't know if the stuff I've been writing over the past few years has done that, but it's certainly felt far more spontaneous and free. Some of it is angry, some of it is happy, most of it seems to be sad, but it is what it is; I'm glad I've never felt the need to edit them because they displayed a side of me I wasn't comfortable with expressing (at least, expressing in writing).

I'm not too sure where to go with it now. I have a few other people I've been considering sending them to, but I'm a little worried that they (knowing me as they do) might read too much into the content, and I'd really rather not deal with that. All stories are somewhat autobiographical, but sometimes a story is just a story.

Ume

2007-02-08T04:49:00.000-05:00

Information found here and here.

------------------

Once upon a time there was a maiden who had a beautiful garden. People came from miles around to walk its curving paths, sit on its stone benches and admire its pretty flowers. Men came from even further away, for the maiden was fair; fairer than the fairest flower in her garden. They brought her exotic gifts, wrote her songs and poetry and waited on her hand and foot, yet all were turned away, for there was no room within her heart for any but her garden. The men despaired, but what were they to do? She had made up her mind that none would possess her.

One day a strange boy came to the garden. He did not glance at the girl, did not speak to her, did not bring her gifts. He walked in, sat down on a bench and began to read. The girl thought this very strange, indeed, but as he was quiet and did not disturb her, she let him be.

The next day a new suitor came, and the boy closed his book to watch. The suitor brought the maiden a present, which she took, but when he tried to approach her, she turned him away, as she always did. Despondent, the suitor left, like countless men before him.

The boy watched in silence.

"Do not judge me so," the maiden said to him.

In response, the boy picked up his book and began to read once more.

The girl was irritated by this strange boy. He did not glance at her, did not speak to her, did not bring her gifts, did not do anything. He simply sat and read. She wanted him to go away, to leave her and her pretty garden in peace, and so she devised a plan to chase him away.

The next day, the maiden walked over to the boy's bench. The boy looked up and closed his book as she approached.

"Boy," she said, "Since you have decided to stay, you must earn your keep."

The boy stared back at her.

The maiden hesitated. She was not a cruel person, and what she was about to say was unnatural to her.

"Fetch me a bag of manure from the shed."

The boy held her gaze for a moment longer, just long enough to unsettle her, then placed his book on the bench, stood and brought her a bag of manure from the shed. The maiden was unsure if her plan was working as intended, so she continued to make demands of the boy, hoping that one day he would have had enough, and she would wake to an empty garden once more. But every morning she awoke to find him on his bench, reading his book. The maiden's irritation came to be replaced with something new, something she had never felt towards anyone, man or boy before, and she became afraid. She did not know what to do with this strange new seed within her, which grew with every passing day, and she was afraid of what it meant for her beautiful garden. So, one summer day, she decided she had no choice: she packed herself a small bundle and left in the night, planning never to return.

The boy awoke. The maiden was gone, and he missed her; he, in turn, had come to love her, for in her demands he had felt the first stirrings of her feelings. But she was gone, and did not return the next day, nor the day after that, nor the week after that. The boy grew sad, for he felt in his heart that her fear had won, that she would not, could not return to him. So he closed his book and stood, turning his face towards the sun with a silent wish. His whole body began to lengthen and grow; he put down roots and his fingers stretched towards the sky, as if it were his pretty maiden's face. And he was content.

Summer turned to autumn. Autumn turned to winter. And as winter turned to spring, the young tree hoped the maiden would return to her garden. He shot out blossoms just before spring, five petaled blossoms which showed how he had kept track of the passing days: five fingers at a time. Visitors marveled at this new tree, and praised the maiden for making her garden even more beautiful.

But the maiden did not return.

In time the tree bore fruit, round plums filled with all his unshed tears and unsaid words. People picked them, but they were so sour that they could not be eaten. The people shrugged; "Nothing is perfect," they reminded each other with lemon-faced chuckles. The strange tree was certainly beautiful, even if its fruit was inedible.

The seasons marched on; spring turned to summer, summer to fall, fall to winter and winter approached spring once more.

And then, one day, the maiden returned.

She had travelled far, only to find that she could not, did not want to forget the strange boy and his even stranger silences. She loved him, and came back to find him and tell him so. But the boy was gone; his book lay on his bench, but it was cold and empty. Beside his bench was a tree, a tree she knew she had not planted and had never seen before. She ran her hands over its young bark, marveling at this strange miracle, and as she did so its blossoms burst into bloom: red, white and pink, with five petals and a strong fragrance that brought tears to her eyes. And she knew that the strange tree was her strange boy.

The maiden wished he could be her strange boy once more; but some choices, once made, can not be unmade. So she cared for the tree, picking his fruit and pickling it so she could taste his strange flavors, taste his tears and feel his love, even when snows covered the land. People came, and she allowed them to take cuttings from her beloved tree, spreading the strange boy's love for her, and his tears, all over the world. As the years passed by, the people who returned noticed that the maiden had ceased aging; like a tree, her growth was undetectable to the human eye. Seas rose and fell; the land around her changed, but the maiden's garden and her strange tree remained untouched. And there, high in some forgotten mountain range, they remain, and will remain until the end of time: a beautiful maiden, her pretty garden and her strange plum tree.

Party on the Bloc?

2007-02-07T22:20:00.000-05:00

Feeling kinda down tonight; just generally run down and a bit tired.

Been listening to a lot of A Weekend in the City, Bloc Party's new album. It's not as strong as Silent Alarm, but it's different; seems a bit more contemplative, a bit more melancholic. I wonder if that's part of the reason for my current mood. Favorite track so far is "I Still Remember", which, in my typical fashion, I've had on repeat for the last little while and it's already solidly into my Top 25 Played Songs:

I...I still remember
how you looked that afternoon.
There was only you.

You said "It's just like a full moon,"
Blood beats faster in our veins.
We left our trousers by the canal
And our fingers, they almost touched

You should have asked me for it;
I would have been brave.
You should have asked me for it;
How could I say no?

And our love could have soared
Over playgrounds and rooftops;
Every park bench screams your name.
I kept your tie

I'd've gone wherever you wanted

I still remember

And on that teachers' training day
We wrote our names on every train;
Laughed at the people off to work,
So monochrome and so lukewarm.

And I can see our days are becoming nights,
I could feel your heartbeat across the grass.
We should have run,
I would go with you anywhere.
I should have kissed you by the water

You should have asked me for it;
I would have been brave.
You should have asked me for it;
How could I say no?

And our love could have soared
Over playgrounds and rooftops;
Every park bench screams your name.
I kept your tie

I'd've let you if you asked me.

I still remember.

In case you were wondering (and I know you were!), this is what my full Top 25 Played Songs list looks like on this computer:

Fields of Gold (New Version) - Sting
I Saw Her at the Anti-War Demonstration - Jens Lekman
Motorcycle Drive By - Third Eye Blind
Landslide - Fleetwood Mac
Regret - New Order
Maps - Yeah Yeah Yeahs
Code Monkey - Jonathan Coulton
Here It Goes Again - OK Go
Rockaway Beach - The Ramones
Do You Wanna Dance - The Ramones
Bad - U2
Glasgow Love Theme - Craig Armstrong
Perfect Day - Lou Reed
New Slang - The Shins
The New Year - Death Cab for Cutie
I Still Remember - Bloc Party
Turn - New Order
The Trapeze Swinger - Iron & Wine
Oh Well - Fiona Apple
Jesus Doesn't Want Me For a Sunbeam (Live) - Nirvana
Please Please Please - Fiona Apple
Unwritten - Natasha Bedingfield
This Modern Love - Bloc Party
Since I Saw Her Standing There - The Beatles
For Real - Okkervil River

Man...I have the weirdest taste in music ever. I mean, I prefer the term, "eclectic," but let's face it, that's a nice way of saying weird, kind of like "eccentric."

Ciao

2007-02-06T16:03:00.000-05:00

Living here day by day, you think it's the center of the world. You believe nothing will ever change. Then you leave: a year, two years. When you come back, everything's changed. The thread's broken. What you came to find isn't there. What was yours is gone. You have to go away for a long time... many years... before you can come back and find your people. The land where you were born. But now, no. It's not possible. Right now you're blinder than I am.

Just finished watching Cinema Paradiso, which was fantastic - and I hesitate to say this, because it seems to be said far too often, with far too little reason - one of the best tributes to movies and their power that I've ever seen.

The movie's also about personal growth (aren't they always?), and it's interesting that the above quote is one of the two posted on the imdb profile. For me, coming back to Toronto, the thread is indeed broken. There is nothing here that I know anymore, nothing that ties me here. I suppose that was part of the problem at the US border. The main character (as an adolescent) leaves his home town, becomes established as a filmmaker and never looks back, never goes back, never calls, partially because his mentor (the speaker of the above line) tells him not to, tells him that if he returns he'll refuse to see him, that he doesn't want to talk to him, he wants to be talking about him. And yet, you don't want to live without any sense of grounding, of belonging. There is (as there always is) a lost-love, a relationship which is never resolved and which he seems to have been searching for since he lost it, since it was taken away from him.

That certainly isn't attractive, but it is human. I suppose he finds meaning in his work, in his passion, which is summed up quite nicely in the finish, one of the most passionate 5 or so minutes of film I've ever seen. I don't want to spoil it, but it's amazing.

I've been told I'm terrible at this game, but doesn't the girl who plays the love interest look sort of like Grace Kelly? Just a little?

Check, Please?

2007-02-05T14:44:00.000-05:00

Bam! $2.9 trillion is the 2007 US budget, of which $481.1 billion is earmarked for the Defense Department, $49 billion higher than last year. This number, of course, is still smaller than the approximately $700 billion for the Department of Health and Human Services and the $656 for Social Security, but the DoD number also doesn't count the $93 billion for this year and $145 billion for next year which has been requested as supplemental funding for the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, money which doesn't need to be counted in the budget because it's - well - supplemental.

It is staggering that the Bush administration claims the budget will be balanced in 2012 while "...the budget package projects no spending on Iraq and Afghanistan after 2009. “There will be no timetables set,” Mr. Bush said in a question-answer session after a Cabinet meeting this morning. “We don’t want to send mixed signals to an enemy, or to a struggling democracy, or to our troops.”"

Now, not wanting to send mixed signals is fine and understandable. But if you're not counting that spending past 2009, how can you rationally believe that the budget will be balanced in 2012? How can you account for that spending which, by your very own admission, you are refusing to count, like some child trying to ignore something and pretend it isn't there? When did Republicans become profligate spenders and Democrats the ones trying to rein them in?

Toronto: A Bit of Alright?

2007-02-05T12:39:00.000-05:00

As much as I disparage Toronto and Canada, it is nice sometimes to be reminded that the difference between here and New York can sometimes be a neat thing. Case in point, this article from Torontoist.com. The article refers to a street in the downtown core which the city is designing pretty much from scratch, and so is holding meetings to gather community feedback for their proposals. And so:

The meeting started with a presentation by the architects who are leading the project. They proposed, as a sort of opening bid, a 35-meter-wide street (a little bit more narrow than Spadina, for example), including extra wide (4.5 meter) sidewalks, four lanes of traffic (including a slightly widened lane for bicycles and off-peak parking, but not a full bike lane), and a streetcar right-of-way. It was a modestly impressive attempt at pleasing all interests.

Then came time for questions of clarification, and the very first one was impressive. "Has there been any thought given to the very likely possibility that cars won't be playing a key role in our transportation mix at all 25 years from now? Why are we building any lanes for cars?" The question wasn't asked in a confrontational tone, nor did it come from someone wearing sandals and a hemp-woven hat. It was simply a reasonable observation of the facts, coming from a normal, reasonable person.

Wow. Way to go, that person. And yet, even though I love New York way more than I'll ever love Toronto, even though I consider New York my home and would love to live there again some day, it pains me to wonder (and doubt) if anyone there would express a similar sentiment in such a non-confrontational, consensus-seeking fashion. In some ways, the in-your-face that is New York is one of the things that I love about it (of course, the New York aggressiveness is interesting in that it exists, but only if provoked; if you walk down the street and keep to yourself, you are far more likely to be left alone and not have every person you pass by stare at you, no matter what you look like, than you are in any other city I've ever been in).

I watched An Inconvenient Truth a few days ago, and had an incredibly frustrating conversation with a person about it. This person's viewpoint was essentially the same as the one that Matt Drudge foists upon his readers (for example); it is the perspective that the human factor in global warming remains unproven (perhaps is even, ultimately, unprovable?); that there could be other factors to account for it, that the rising temperatures are simply a part of the earth's natural cycle, and so there is little or no reason for us to change our lifestyles, certainly not without much more research into the effects of carbon dioxide and other factors on the Earth's climate.

There's something inherently wrong with that perspective, with the perspective that just because things seem fine right now, they always will be, that without incontrovertible proof there's no reason to make any changes whatsoever. And the most frustrating thing is, there doesn't necessarily need to be massive changes for real progress in sustainable growth, changes which would benefit both the environment and consumers. Everyone knows fossil fuels are a finite resource; why then are we not conserving as much as possible? Why are North Americans the only people living on the planet who barely give a thought to recycling, to energy efficient appliances and weather-proofing homes? Why do people still need to be reminded to turn lights off when they're not in the room? How much of a difference could it make if governments upped gas mileage requirements by 2 miles per gallon? Or 4? How about 10? How about mandating minimum efficiency requirements for other appliances, or for lightbulbs? Why is mass transit over here so shitty? All of these things are so minor (well, maybe not the mass transit question), and yet add up to savings for both consumers (less money spent on gas and utility bills) and the environment. So why not go ahead with them? What does it hurt? Why is North America so fucking selfish?

Tomorrow

2007-02-03T14:58:00.000-05:00

Another day, another cigarette. He inhales and holds his breath, feeling the smoke wash through him, displacing him. He looks down at his hands, half expecting them to turn insubstantial before his eyes, to see the smoke issuing from under his fingernails, to see himself bleeding away before his eyes. He watches the people pass by, alone and isolated in their hopes and fears, and wishes he could be like them, wishes he could help them all. The wind blows, ice blowing over him, blowing through him, making him numb, a blessed numbness that he welcomes, that he surrenders to and is carried along by. The hand holding the cigarette lost all feeling long ago; he glances down at the foreign claw at the end of his arm and smiles, swept away by a memory of storm-filled eyes and an irresistable smile. "The hand that holds the cigarette always gets colder." So it does. So it does.

Overcast

2007-02-02T14:36:00.000-05:00

Grey, grey, as far as the eye can see; the sun a pinprick of light, straining through the curtain of clouds. He takes a drag, feeling lightheaded; as if he is floating just above the pavement, as if the steady rhythm of inhale and exhale is the only thing keeping him together, as if the second he stops he will burst out of his skin, scatter into the wind and disperse. He has always felt this way, felt as if there was a secret he wasn't quite aware of, as if he was never meant to be here, as if it is all a surprise to him. He closes his eyes and feels the light on his eyelids; light without heat, without source, pressing down on him, giving him shape. Her face, unbidden, floats out of his memory, and it is a dam bursting. Her in the night, in the predawn, in the day, in the evening, washing over him, the memories pummeling him with their vividness and detail. He stubs out the cigarette and lifts his fingers to his face, smelling that ancient smell of earth and sweet; of her and him in a creaky apartment while the world passed by.

The Unbearable Blackness of Barack Obama

2007-02-02T10:43:00.000-05:00

Shit like this makes me really angry.

The article, for those unwilling to click, is entitled, "So Far, Obama Can't Take Black Vote for Granted."

No, that's not what irritates me. What irritates me is the sense both from the writer and from the people quoted within that a truly "black" presidential candidate should be expected to carry the black vote, simply by virtue of his blackness, but his specifically American slave blackness. To wit:

“When you think of a president, you think of an American,” said Mr. Lanier, a 58-year-old barber who is still considering whether to support Mr. Obama. “We’ve been taught that a president should come from right here, born, raised, bred, fed in America. To go outside and bring somebody in from another nationality, now that doesn’t feel right to some people.”

Guess what? This statement is bald-faced fucking racism. It's black-on-black, but it's still racism. Barack Obama (according to his official bio over here) was born in Hawaii - America, last time I looked. According to the wiki on him, he went to Indonesia with his mother after his parents split, attending a madrassah from age 6 to 10, then returning to Hawaii to go to a private school until he finished high school. All of his collegiate and subsequent career was in the United States. So what's the problem? How the fuck is Barack Obama considered un-American? Because his daddy's daddy wasn't a big industrialist in the States who did business with Nazis? Because any white politician whose father was a big industrialist probably did business with them (well, this basically refers to the Bush and Kennedy families). Oh, but wait; there's more. Just in case you didn't quite get the picture:

“I’ve got nothing but love for the brother, but we don’t have anything in common,” said Ms. Dickerson, who wrote recently about Mr. Obama in Salon, the online magazine. “His father was African. His mother was a white woman. He grew up with white grandparents.
“Now, I’m willing to adopt him,” Ms. Dickerson continued. “He married black. He acts black. But there’s a lot of distance between black Africans and African-Americans.”

I'm sorry. You'll accept him as a presidential candidate because he married black? Because he acts black? How about you take a look at his policies, you stupid fuck? Shouldn't that be more important than any skin tone, any physical characteristic whatsoever? And what the fuck does it mean to act black, anyways? By the mainstream definition, doesn't that mean he should have a criminal record and write songs about bitches, blunts and 40s? Surely there must be a voice of reason somewhere in this article, right?

“He’s going to have to win over some African-Americans,” said Mr. Walters, who is black and heads the African-American Leadership Institute at the University of Maryland. “They have a right to be somewhat suspicious of people who come into the country and don’t share their experience.”

Oh, they have a right to be suspicious of people who don't share their experience, ok. How many people were the rich-ass son of a former President, were set for life monetarily, got cushy assignments keeping them out of Vietnam and were allowed to run several businesses into the ground before being bailed out by daddy's friends? How many people were former actors and the head of SAG? How many people were peanut fucking farmers?

Here's a thought: maybe if black people stopped being so hung up on being "black" and excluding everyone they don't like who doesn't fit into their little club, they might be able to move on and effect some real change in society. Maybe if black people weren't so afraid of becoming "Uncle Toms," of being labelled a traitor to their race (whatever the hell that means) because of a simple desire to better their and their family's economic situation, black people wouldn't remain shockingly poor as a whole. Yes, there are difficulties; everyone who is not white faces them. But they also need to wake up and realize the effect their own acts of self-sabotage have.

I don't even really care much for Barack Obama. I don't know much about his platform, and I think he's been deliberately vague on the subject. He doesn't have much experience as a legislator, and I think that making him President at this point in time in his political career might be a big mistake. But he deserves to be judged as any politician, as any person does: by the strength of his words and actions. Do not fucking walk up to him and say, "You don't understand me." Guess what, asshole? No-one understands you. No-one has experienced your unique set of circumstances, no-one has your specific personality and no-one chose to respond to their circumstances in exactly the way you did. Get the fuck over yourself and everything that you think defines a person, because you are wrong, wrong, wrong.

(insert content here)

2007-02-01T18:29:00.000-05:00

So, I just realized I typed up that whole post about the witty back-and-forth and then didn't talk about the content of the quote at all.

One of the things I love about reading older literature, which I tried to communicate in a previous post, is the recognition of themes and thoughts which have become dominant today, which might not necessarily have been at the time of their writing; in this case, the idea that a relationship legitimizes you, makes you somehow a better person because you have someone who supports and pushes you to be the best person you can be.

I don't know how I feel about that. On the one hand I think it's accurate; we always want to please the ones we love. But it's very dangerous territory to tread, and I certainly don't think Eliot is necessarily positing such a perspective as good; it's simply an observational truth. Who among us hasn't changed to fit our perception of our lover's wants, only for them to turn around and say that we've changed, that we aren't the person that they fell for anymore? And then what are we left with, what remains of our identity, where do we go from there? Why do we do that to ourselves? And is there any way to avoid it?

I like to believe that there is. There will always be conflict in relationships, and there will always be temptations to do whatever is necessary to avoid those conflicts. I feel this in particular; due to my own history, I am intensely conflict-averse, and would often rather endure incredible inconveniences rather than create conflict. But maybe conflict is what defines relationships, maybe there is a healthy level of conflict which is vital to a successful relationship. Maybe if we accepted the inevitability of conflict and, instead of trying to avoid it, concentrated on apologizing, understanding and then moving on from it, we would never fall into the dance of trying to please, of mortgaging everything about ourselves that makes us dangerous and beautiful for a pair of pretty eyes.

Whatever Happened to...?

2007-02-01T10:42:00.000-05:00

"When a man is not loved, it is no use for him to say that he could be a better fellow - could do anything - I mean, if he were sure of being loved in return."
"Not of the least use in the world for him to say he could be better. Might, could, would - they are contemptible auxiliaries."
"I don't see how a man is to be good for much unless he has some one woman to love him dearly."
"I think the goodness should come before he expects that."
"You know better, Mary. Women don't love men for their goodness."
"Perhaps not. But if they love them, they never think them bad."
"It is hardly fair to say I am bad."
"I said nothing at all about you."
"I shall never be good for anything, Mary, if you will not say that you love me - if you will not promise to marry me - I mean, when I am able to marry."
"If I did love you, I would not marry you; I would certainly not promise ever to marry you."
"I think that is quite wicked, Mary. If you love me, you ought to promise to marry me."
"On the contrary, I think it would be wicked in me to marry you even if I did love you."
"You mean, just as I am, without any means of maintaining a wife. Of course: I am but three-and-twenty."
"In that last point you will alter. But I am not so sure of any other alteration. My father says an idle man ought not to exist, much less be married."

Does anyone ever wonder what happened to wit? What happened to sparkling repartee, breezy responses with arched eyebrows while statuesque women lounge on chaises with men perched on the arms, two fencers with epees of words?

There's an interesting article in the new GQ about how Robert De Niro, by giving us the definitive modern portrayals of the tortured anti-hero, has created a legion of impersonators who equate acting with torturedness; in effect, he killed the old-time movie star, men who got by (and won Oscars, not that they're a true sign of acting prowess; more one's ability at politicking, but that's a story for another time) more on personal, intangible charm rather than angst-ridden scream fests (see: Sean Penn. "Is that my Oscar in there? Is that my Oscar in there?" I haven't even seen Mystic River; I really have no interest because that seems to be a pretty accurate portrayal of the subtext of that scene). I think it's a bit excessive to point to De Niro as the only reason (Montgomery Clift? James Dean? Brando? Pacino? Hoffman? Hackman? Nicholson?), but certainly fair to suggest that he had a lot to do with it. The article mentions Clooney as the only modern-day actor who even comes close to the icons of the golden age (when he's not making self-indulgent pap like Syriana), but I would suggest Will Smith as well, someone the article author completely ignores (we pause here for the requisite thoughts about institutional racism). Tom Cruise was also once there, but not anymore, though he probably maintains the highest box-office clout out of any star in Hollywood.

One wonders when the institutional bias against well-constructed comedy began; remember Bill Murray's comments when he was nominated for acting awards after Lost in Translation, where he talked about how they really needed to remember the dramatic actors, who never got enough attention at awards ceremonies.

I am personally of the opinion that comedy is more difficult than drama, simply because comedy cannot be taught, cannot be learned. Everyone instinctively "gets" drama; things happen to each and every one of us which we can equate to any number of experiences. But (comprehension aside) you either get the timing of a joke or you don't. Perhaps part of the reason why fewer great comedies were made in the 70s and 80s and why audience appreciation for them dimmed was because none of the great stars (Woody Allen aside) were capable of it, not because they were bad actors, but because of their specific limitations as actors, because of places they were unable to go, unable to take their audiences. Yes, it is fake; yes, it is elevated reality; but sometimes don't we all want that? Don't we want to be transported to some happy fluffy land for an hour and a half, where the worst thing men do is make disparaging remarks about their inlaws while the women remind the men that they never wanted to get married in the first place? Isn't that part of the point of entertainment? When did the Oscar become the award for the best crying/screaming/handicapped actor? And if you played some role where you were a mentally handicapped dude who had a crying, screaming fit about his dead child, would that, like, automatically win you the Oscar for the next 10 years?

Holy shit, I just had an awesome idea for a screenplay.

Stretching Toward Oblivion

2007-01-31T10:32:00.000-05:00

Had been meaning to write something based around this for quite some time. Not 100% sure how I feel about this; I suppose I'll take another look at it sometime in the future and decide.

He sits in the water and feels it bubbling up from the depths of the earth; hot and salty, the tears of some unknown, ancient god. It washes over him, erasing and rewriting everything it comes into contact with, leaving him blank and whole once more. In his hands he holds two jagged chunks of ice, the pleasant pain his only tether to the world around him. For a moment he watches them crying their slow tears of death that pool in the hidden wells of his hands, which he closes and plunges into the water. It is as if the heat can feel its antithesis, can feel the ice within his hands as it probes, searching for a way to become one with the cold, to slake its neverending thirst; and the cold on the inside of his hands is opening itself, stretching forward for that happy oblivion as a woman welcomes her lover. He grants her wish, a little at a time, feeling the heat seep inside and the chill dissipate, until all that is left is water and the memory of numb hands which gradually return to life.

Newsprint

2007-01-30T18:25:00.000-05:00

A continuation/flip side of this piece.

The slow and steady hiss of dripping coffee wakes him, his dream already disappearing from his mind. Something about a woman on the other side of an ocean, and he was afraid; so afraid.
He feels her absence; he has become so used to the sensation that it is comforting, that he would feel lost without it. Even when she is next to him he feels it, a weight dragging him down, making him solid, making him more real. He remembers how giddy she made him feel when he first met her; as if a strong wind could lift him up and carry him down the street like the front page of a newspaper, the headline of his love written across his forehead. He never feels like that anymore. Every day the emptiness fills him. Grounds him. He puts down roots, roots that clutch and grab at everything within reach and fight the wind with insubstantial mutterings.
He remembers, too, how touching her used to make him feel, how he would press his face into her back, feeling her on his face; wanting more, somehow, some way - even if it meant destroying her to ease his own worries. But even in that he failed, too afraid of the necessary steps and consequences.
He hears the sounds of turning newspaper pages from the other room. This used to be their time, the quiet minutes before the day began when they sat and felt each other's solemn silence, let it cradle and sustain them. But things changed. The silence became strained. Forced. Awkward. He tried to fill it up but that only made it worse, made it more painful, made it more obvious that their perfect silence had been lost, that they had lost it somewhere. He raged; he begged; he pleaded. In the end it was simply another failure to add to his list. Now he lies in bed listening to her in the other room and is afraid to join her.
The scuffle of chair on tile. Coffee being poured. He can feel her approaching, feel the pull getting stronger and stronger.
"Brad?"
Silence. But not a strained one; this one is calm, like the old silence but different in some ancient way, some way he can't quite grasp. He almost cries aloud at having found it again, but is trying so hard to hang onto it that he can't waste a single bit of effort on verbalization.
"Brad, honey?"
Nononopleaseno, IamcloseIswearitIamsofuckingclose.
"Mmmmmm?"
"...coffee..."
Gone.
He looks up at her, holding his cup, and realizes she is trembling in the minutest of ways, vibrating in time with some ancient melody whose strains are only audible when two people make love. Do not be afraid, he wants to tell her, There is no reason to be. We will not be afraid anymore, I will hold your hand and we will laugh, laugh till the seas rise and the land sinks and nothing remains on this earth but the sound of waves and the echoes of our carefree laughter. Keep your secrets, only give me this, this moment, these silences, and I will not ask you for more. And we will be beautiful and terrible, broken and whole, silently screaming for all who care to listen.

I Want

2007-01-30T09:58:00.000-05:00

Emo potato! In fuschia! Rad.

Running to Stand Still

2007-01-29T18:39:00.000-05:00

For all the talk of self-awareness and nonconformity which I spout off at times, it is good (though embarassing and frustrating) to realize that I am not as intellectually independent or iconoclastic as I sometimes think. In general, being reminded of one's shortcomings it a humbling but valuable experience, one which keeps us from turning into Tom Cruise.

If there is anything I am guilty of, it is not giving myself enough credit. I have a spectacularly low level of confidence in myself, which (somewhat counterintuitively) leads to a high level of self-involvement. When you have a low self-esteem, you tend to assume that other people are unaffected by the things you do or the things you say; that when you're not around, other people live more or less the same life that they do when you are around. So you pull into your own little cocoon, assuming that people don't miss you, aren't thinking of you and certainly wouldn't want to hear from you. I've always been terrible at calling up friends because I always assume that people are out living happy lives, and if they wanted or needed to chat with me they would call me up.

It's so confining, and I'm so tired of it, but I'm at a loss as to how to really get beyond it. For the longest time I sought solace in relationships, or in the idea of a relationship, in the idea that getting someone to love me meant justification and legitimacy.

In retrospect, it's a terrifying thought.

Still, I suppose we all go through phases. And yet here I am, saddened to find that I am still that same odd little kid inside. There has to be a way out of this. There has to be. I just need to keep telling myself that.

(-.-) or <3?

2007-01-27T14:30:00.000-05:00

You Follow Your Heart

You're romantic, sentimental, and emotional.
You tend to fall in (and out of) love very quickly.
Some may call you fickle, but you can't help where your emotions take you.
You've definitely broken a few hearts, but you're not a heartbreaker by nature.
Your intentions are always good, even if they change with the wind

Do You Follow Your Head or Your Heart?

U2 Explains My World, Part 2

2007-01-27T10:07:00.000-05:00

The Fly
Falling. The Fly picks up where So Cruel left off, with a deeper affection and appreciation replacing the original infatuation, and the new love replacing the old ("They say the sun is sometimes eclipsed by the moon / You know I don't see you when she walks in the room"). Some interesting thoughts about how romantic failures and successes are relatively alike to artists in that they are both inspiration ("Every artist is a cannibal, every poet is a thief / All kill their inspiration and sing about their grief"). The main image, of course, is the metaphor of relationships as shooting stars, burning bright and inevitably falling into darkness ("Love / we shine like a burning star / we're falling from the sky"), and yet, even knowing this, the singer is powerless to prevent it; it is questionable whether or not he would even if he could. Perhaps all relationships are doomed to failure eventually, but that does not mean we shouldn't ever try. Indeed, it is the trying that is most beautiful and admirable about humanity.

Mysterious Ways
U2's version of She's Got a Way. Who can truly say what it is about people that attracts us to them? To be sure, there are any number of characteristics that people find attractive that they can all reel off as the things they look for. But when it comes right down to it, there is one extra thing that most (if not all) people look for, that undefinable spark, similar to the "it" factor that Hollywood stars have which separates them from people who are good, great or even brilliant actors (Tom Cruise is a star. Kevin Kline is a brilliant actor). There is an element of redemption and self-validation which people find in relationships, even knowing that they shouldn't, that such things are ephemeral and ultimately self-destructive ("She's the wave / she turns the tide / she sees the man inside the child"). Perhaps it isn't even so much that, it's revelling in the feeling of rediscovery, of being found again by someone you really wanted to find you, someone you were hoping could and would find you.

Tryin' to Throw Your Arms Around the World
Ever experience one of those magical days with someone that never seems to end, where the two of you walk and talk and sit in silence and it just goes on and on; you finally say goodbye, the sun is out and you feel drained and elated, happy and fulfilled? That is what this song captures. It also happens to be the source of one of the best lyrics about women ever ("A woman needs a man / like a fish needs a bicycle"). Note there's no corresponding lyric about how badly a man needs a woman. There is, I think, an incredible respect for women layered into this song, a sense that the woman has it all together and the man is playing catchup ("I'm gonna run to you / run to you / run to you / woman be still"). I don't know that I would go that far; women are not perfect by any stretch of the imagination. But I have an immense respect and love for women, who put up with so many extra societal pressures that men will never have to deal with and will never really be able to understand.

Ultraviolet (Light My Way)
Expanding on the redemptive power of relationships touched on in The Fly ("Sometimes I feel like I don't know / Sometimes I feel like checkin out / I wanna get it wrong / can't always be strong / and love it won't be long"). The best relationships are ones of mutual support, where love is given and received freely. And it is difficult, when both people have have been hurt in the past, to be able to find that, to find an unselfish, caring relationship ("You bury your treasure / where it can't be found / But your love is like a secret / that's been passed around / There is a silence / that comes to a house / where no-one can sleep / I guess that's the price of love / I know it's not cheap"). Building a mutual relationship is difficult, it is possibly the most difficult endeavor that people can embark upon, because it never ends. Businesses can be sold, careers can be brought to a conclusion, children can grow old and become independent, but your partner will require a new reaffirmation from you every morning, every evening and 100 times in between. And I don't say that to mean they literally will require it of you; rather, it is the relationship itself which requires that level of commitment. The power of a mutual relationship (lacking the unequal distribution of power which characterizes many or most relationships) comes at a heavy price; you will sacrifice your pride, your dignity and your self-control. But you can gain more than you ever thought possible.

Acrobat
Interestingly enough, Acrobat begins to bring us back where we started this album. It's about what happens when the first blush of infatuation begins to fade, when things start faltering ("When I first met you girl / you had fire in your soul / what happened; your face of melting snow"). In most relationships, the first hurdles are big ones, because they'll set the tone for how the rest of the relationship will go. When things get difficult, it is tempting (for me, at least) to try even harder to fix them, to make things right ("I must be / an acrobat / to talk like this / and act like that"). But there are also some things you can't fix, no matter how hard you try. People don't need saving, they don't need fixing; people are beautiful and terrible precisely because they are broken; we are all broken, and making our way as best as we can.

Love is Blindness
So we've gone a whole album talking about relationships and somehow have avoided any specific paens on the nature of love itself. Bam! Love is blindness, yes, but not simply physical blindness; love is also emotional and mental blindness. It has to be, when all your past relationships have ended in failure, in order for you to believe that this, this one is more real, is different, will be different because you will make it so. Are we ever right? I like to think sometimes, people do manage it, but I can't honestly say.

What originally started me writing this was noticing how so many of the songs seemed to speak to me, wondering what sort of unconscious effect listening to the album during those years might have had. What sort of a person might I be if I'd grown up listening to The Clash or Songs of Leonard Cohen instead? Is that why people identify so strongly with music, use it to define themselves and even use it to rule out potential mates? Is that last part even true; if someone was absolutely perfect but liked some godawful music, would you tell them to hit the road? Or is a similar taste in music contingent to being considered perfect?

Probably the latter. Perhaps the reason why music is so intrinsic to people's lives is because they make themselves resemble the music they love as children, they shape themselves to fit the longing strains and crashing choruses which give meaning to otherwise difficult and non-soundtracked lives.

Stone Woman

2007-01-26T23:58:00.000-05:00

Silent pleas
running down her cheeks
this stranger
this woman I have never known
whom I can never escape.

A crumpled napkin filled
with all the words left unsaid
and all the dreams
I couldn't fulfill.

I am sorry
I was not all you hoped I would be.

You never asked
so I never knew.
I still don't, you know.

Why are we stuck here
and where do we go?
They never gave me a manual
and I sometimes forget
you never got one either.

Sometimes I wish you could hold me
like you probably did
but I can't remember you ever doing.
Sometimes it's you who need to be held
but I can't remember how to do something
I've never done before.

I'm sorry,
I didn't mean to disappoint you.

Love Type

2007-01-26T13:45:00.000-05:00

Your Love Type: INFP

The Idealist

In love, you crave a long term, harmonious relationship.
For you, sex doesn't come quickly - it takes time for you to open up.

Overall, you are supportive, nurturing, and expressive.
However, you tend to be shy and protective of your personal space.

Best matches: ENFJ and ESFJ

What's Your Love Type?

Just did the test over here and it still categorizes me as an INFJ. I've read through INFP before though, and aspects of it certainly seem to apply to me.

U2 Explains My World

2007-01-26T10:47:00.000-05:00

Actung Baby was the first album I ever bought and listened a lot of, and I've been listening to it a lot lately. A lot of the songs tend to deal with relationships, and it's rather disconcerting to find that many of the songs seem to speak to experiences and perspectives which I have or had at some time or another. To wit:

Zoo Station
So Zoo Station is about a relationship, but one that can't quite solidify, one where one of the people is ready (or professes to be, at least), but for one reason or another, the other is not (in terms of the song, or more specifically in terms of the context of the album and the songs which follow, I think it's because the other person is actually a past lover who has already moved on. But more on that in the next blurb). Oddly enough, all of the relationships I've ever been in have always begun under difficult circumstances in some way or another, some sort of distance, either emotional or physical. I've never been quite sure if this has just been luck of the draw, or whether I seek such relationships out, whether the necessity of pursuit is itself what draws me to certain people and relationships. It isn't really a good thing, I don't think, but if I'm being honest with myself it is a trend that does pop out.

Even Better Than the Real Thing
A hookup with the past; possibly even breakup sex. If Zoo Station is about a person still emotionally attached to a relationship while the other has moved on, then EBTtRT is about the desire, when you've been broken up with, to go back to those feelings you once had, to the relationship which was once fulfilling and to make it, for one brief, delusional moment, real again ("You're the real thing / Even better than the real thing"). Now, I've had breakup sex, but I didn't realize it was breakup sex. So there I am, doing my normal thing and thinking everything is fine, when in actuality it was some sort of bullshit pity fuck. Which is fine, but have the decency to let me know that's what it is so I can treat is as such, y'know? I've never had ex-sex, which is probably for the best since I don't think it's a great thing to dabble with; there are just too many (re)attachments which can be inadvertently made.

One
The fallout of a relationship. I think of One as the first meeting after a breakup ("Is it getting better / or do you feel the same? / Will it make it easier on you, now / you got someone to blame?"), when both sides are kind of feeling each other out; there's so much emotional baggage that needs to be dealt with, so many questions and so many fears that need to be worked out before two people can return to any kind of a friendship (and that assumes that both people want to remain friends - I suppose sometimes you just want that person completely out of your life). Interestingtly enough, I don't think the overall message of One is that of communication; I think part of the point of the song is that there are some things that shouldn't be said, that support and (platonic) love can be given without needing to go over every single individual hurt and slight. This mirrors the end of the biggest relationship of my life, one which I still have some lingering questions about, but those questions aren't really important anymore. What is important is that we met, fell in love, grew together, grew apart and then moved on, both the better for having known each other, and both with one more person in our lives to help carry our load.

Until the End of the World
Similar to One. After any breakup there is bitterness, there is anger, there is the sense that you will never be able to escape from all these horrible feelings you're having ("In my dream I was drowning my sorrows / But my sorrows, they learned to swim") and there is the sense of betrayal, which lingers after the end of any emotional attachment ("Waves of regret, waves of joy / I reached out for the one I tried to destroy / You, you said you'd wait till the end of the world").

Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses
When you're trying to move on, trying to get past the big relationships of your life, one of the things that often makes it even more difficult is the elimination of someone who used to be such a huge part of your life, someone you could be silly and wise with, someone you could sit and watch kiddie cartoons with while expounding on the workings of political economy, someone you felt comfortable sharing your deepest fears and insecurities with. Suddenly that person is gone, but they're not - they're still the same person, just the terms of your relationship have changed. It's inevitable to feel a bit of sadness and anger knowing that you will be replaced in that respect, but you also realize that at the same time, no matter who replaces you it will not, can not and should not be the same as the relationship she and you shared ("Who's gonna ride your wild horses / Who's gonna tame the heart of thee").

So Cruel
So Cruel is about falling for someone again, after having been through the emotional wringer at least once before. You've been hurt, you've poured yourself into something only to see it fail, and then someone comes along who makes you forget all that, who makes you drop your guard, for whatever reason; it's also about taking that next step again, beyond casual infatuation ("We crossed the line / who pushed who over"). I think it might even be about a morning-after experience ("Oh love / to stay with you I'd be a fool"). The object of the song is a woman who is attractive precisely because she isn't tied down ("The men who love you, you hate the most / they pass right through you, like a ghost / they look for you but your spirit is in the air"), because she can't be pinned down, and for a person who's spent a good amount of time working at a relationship, such relative freedom is very attractive. It isn't a question of wanting to tie that person down or make them yours, it's more wanting to feel that way yourself, seeking a relationship where there is passion and emotion but not in a stifling sense, learning how to rewrite all your preconceived notions about relationships ("Oh love / you say in love there are no rules"). I think in your early relationships you try so hard to make them perfect; you're always rushing here and there, spending emotional energy to please your partner and driving them away with your excessive attention. As you get older you realize that relationships should, in fact, be partnerships, that what is most beautiful about a relationship is the choice made by both parties involved to remain together, that it is not about obligation and responsibility or convincing someone to stay with you, but about a choice made every minute of every day. This, Tryin' to Throw Your Arms Around the World and Ultraviolet (Light My Way) are my favorite songs off the album.

Phew. I guess I didn't really delve as much into personal details, but I assume some things are self-evident from the way I interpreted some of the songs. I am, of course, only half through the album - I'll do the other half tomorrow, this is getting way long.

Legacies

2007-01-25T16:26:00.000-05:00

We mortals, men and women, devour many a disappointment between breakfast and dinner-time; keep back the tears and look a little pale about the lips, and in answer to inquiries say, "Oh, nothing!" Pride helps us; and pride is not a bad thing when it only urges us to hide our own hurts - not to hurt others.

I'm not super far into Middlemarch, but I'm enjoying it so far, beginning with the revelation that George Eliot was actually the nom de plume of Mary Anne (later Marian) Evans.

It's interesting, because Eliot comes just before the explosion of Woolf, Joyce and Proust - the advent of literary modernism - but after the torrid romanticism of Austen and the Brontes. As such, elements of both can be found in her work, but it also seems to lack the tortured aspect that the individual and the novel would take on in the late 19th and early 20th century, thanks more to Woolf and Joyce than Proust, who has far more in common with Eliot than the other two. This is not to say that characters in Middlemarch are not or will not be unhappy (at least, I assume they'll be unhappy at some point), but the overall tone remains lighter than one might expect. It's also interesting to see the narrative tricks she employed, with multiple instances of the omniscient narrator interrupting the story to inform the reader of this or that tidbit, or to provide a bit of droll commentary. The psychological insights have been quite interesting so far; I can definitely understand why I've seen Middlemarch referred to as the great Victorian novel.

The psychological insights of Middlemarch, however, bring to mind an argument of Harold Bloom's about the development of the human psyche. Bloom's argument regarding Shakespeare is that he does not so much capture the essence of humanity as create it; that is, Hamlet is, in a sense, a more fully realized human being than the vast majority of people ever become, that in writing his plays Shakespeare was not so much commenting on and depicting the human condition as he was inventing it, building a concept of humanity which has come to dominate all of western thought. Great art changes all those who are engaged by it, so is it possible that Eliot's (and any author's) words ring true because people believe them to be true, because people make them true? It's an interesting and slightly chilling thought, because the potential for abuse is frightening. It also ties into some thoughts I've been having recently about music, but I'll save those for another post.

I'd seen Middlemarch and heard of George Eliot before, but it wasn't until I heard about this list, a compilation of 125 authors' top ten lists that I decided to go ahead and pick it up. I've only read 4 of the 10 books on the list, so by the time this year is done I hope to have gotten through the other 6.

Whose Nation Is It, Anyways?

2007-01-24T18:02:00.000-05:00

1. The Rebel Sell: Why the culture can't be jammed, Joseph Heath & Andrew Potter
2. The Complete Grimm's Fairy Tales, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm
3. Rabbit, Run, John Updike
4. Everything is Illuminated, Jonathan Safran Foer
5. Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser
6. Middlemarch, George Eliot

One of the things that makes countercultural arguments so irritating at times is the inescapable elitism which goes hand in hand with critiquing mass culture. In regard to fast food and the general western trend towards processed and genetically engineered food, people who criticize the culture often ignore the simplest reason for the ascendance of fast food: it is cheap, and of uniform quality. No matter where you go in the world, no matter where you are, a McDonald's burger and fry combo will taste pretty much the same. Critics decry this as a sign of world-wide homogenity, of cultural hegemony and assimilation, and they are correct, but they are also turning their noses up at the millions of average people who are unable to afford any better. Touting environmentally sensitive and sustainable solutions is certainly admirable and desirable, but the fact remains that unless such solutions are affordable for the majority of a population, they will fail.

Schlosser also ends up in the odd position of contradicting much of his early argument. He goes to great lengths to describe the horrible conditions in slaughterhouses and meat processing plants, then goes on to state how the big fast food chains, acting in their own interest, have pushed health reform on the companies which provide their meat. But if McDonald's meat is safer than store-bought meat, isn't that making the argument that more people should eat at fast food chains, since the government is unwilling to pass legislation that would test meat sold in supermarkets?

It is interesting that, like Naomi Klein, he advocates an economic solution; that is, the route to change is through economic pressure on trans-national corporations. Like Klein, he cites the McLibel case as a turning point, a perfect example of how publicity can be turned against corporations and effect change. But what both he and Klein forget is the essential role which government played in the case, in providing the forum and the platform for the words of the two plaintiffs to be heard. Without the legal institutions, without the possibility of McDonald's taking those activists to court, their chances of garnering such international attention were next to nil.

I do believe that we are quickly approaching a turning point, a point from which our development will become irrevocably destructive and which the planet will move to correct. But I also believe there is still time for government to step in, to show the way and to force real, effective change, and it has to be government, because private interests will never provide all the services and goods necessary for a healthy society; if the widespread deregulation of the last 20 years has proven anything, it is this.

I had a friend mention recently that what he found so distasteful about North American society is how isolated it is, how isolated individuals within it are made to feel. He's right. The problems with fast food society are not specific to the fast food industry; they are the same problems faced in every industry, they are the symptoms of a society and a culture which is itself diseased, which is slowly but surely destroying the vast majority of its citizens.

Contrite Illumination

2007-01-23T16:27:00.000-05:00

Regarding the quote which masqueraded as a post yesterday:

It is not really physically difficult to tell someone you love them. What is difficult, and what becomes increasingly difficult as I get older, is saying it to someone and really meaning it.

When I was younger, I believed in love. I was so eager to feel it that I told myself I was in love with people I hardly knew, people who were as ill-formed and confused as I was, if not more (though I find that difficult to conceive of). When I finally had the opportunity to express those feelings, I threw myself into it wholeheartedly. I think, like many people, I was in love with the idea of being in love; ideas are, after all, much neater and tidier than people are. This makes ideas necessarily less interesting and rewarding, but much more convenient.

Now, I don't really know what I believe. What I thought was love I do not recognize as love today; aspects remain, but the past love I felt was fundamentally flawed. I don't believe in love at first sight; I do believe in lust at first sight. I think it's possible to meet people and instantly know they will factor into your life somehow, that meeting and knowing them will change your and their lives, just as it is sometimes possible to feel the course of your life changing, to feel, in your bones, the divergent paths that lay before you.

Part of the problem, I think, (well, it's not really a problem, but whatever) is that love is not a static thing, nor should it be. Love is not a component that you take around with you and plug into each person you fall in love with. Each love is unique, as unique as the person whom you feel it towards. And, as people are always growing and changing, so must your love for them, or you risk waking up one day and saying I love you to someone you don't know, to a ghost who they used to be but aren't any more.

In some ways, I suppose this is saddening; who among us has not wished things could stay frozen in time in one perfect moment? Yet things can never stay the same; events conspire to pull us apart and push us together, people come into contact with new ideas and individuals. Perhaps the concept of love as constant is what is most damaging about it; perhaps it people accepted the inevitability of its change they would feel freer to love and be loved as they lived their lives, rediscovering their love for each other with every new day.

I want to say I love you again to someone, someday. But I want it to mean something, something more than movie-of-the-week bullshit. That is what makes me hesitate; not because I find it difficult, but because I don't want to devalue it in any way. And yet, is it really devaluing to say it, if it is truly felt and honestly expressed? Is love supposed to be a blanket term, is it supposed to mean respect and honor and cherish and lust for and am amused by and so forth?

Man, where's Forrest Gump when I need him.

Oh, and in a completely unrelated note, I'm sort of thinking of getting this t-shirt. Bunnies!

Illumination

2007-01-22T11:43:00.000-05:00

Of course, he said, although it came as a great surprise - not that she didn't love him, but that she would say it. In the past seven years of lovemaking he had heard the words so many times: from the mouths of widows and children, from prostitutes, family friends, travelers and adulterous wives. Women had said I love you without his ever speaking. The more you love someone, he came to think, the harder it is to tell them.

The Unexamined Life

2007-01-20T17:53:00.000-05:00

Some more T. S. Eliot thoughts.

I don't know that I ever explicitly considered the concept of the "buried life" in Eliot's work. I do know that what always attracted me to him was the sense of longing in his poetry, as well as his way with words and imagery. Prufrock is my favorite, a poem about a lonely, middle-aged man.

I find it interesting that most of the things I tend to write have a melancholic tone about them, all the moreso because I have generally thought of myself as an intrisically optimistic person. To be sure, I have always been shy, something which lends itself to sadness and reflectiveness. But shyness is not an active trait; you cannot "play" shy onstage without being a cliche. In order to come across as shy one must understand that shyness is rooted in the desire to be outgoing, to be vivacious and interesting; that desire is simply thwarted by neuroses and fears. It is in finding the moments where characters yearn to break free and find themselves unable to that shyness is effectively conveyed in a living way.

As I grow older, I find that I am almost entirely comprised of complete contradictions. I am shy, yet wish to expose myself emotionally on stage and screen. I'm quiet and introverted, yet can act incredibly arrogant and overbearing when meeting people. I'm a romantic, and yet intellectually I think I tend to come across as a smug cynic.

Cynicism is a funny thing. People who are called cynics generally think of themselves as pragmatists; it's not being unfair to think the things they think, it's simply being realistic. And yet, every cynic is, at heart, a romantic. It is because their romantic leanings and beliefs have been trod upon by the world that makes them react intellectually in the opposite direction, forming a wall of defense so that their soft, inner core can't be hurt. This sounds so cliche, the "whore with the heart of gold," and yet the effectiveness of that archtype reflects its inner emotional truth.

Uh, I think I just called myself a whore. At least I have a heart of gold?

I doubt so many things; about myself, about others, about the world. And at the same time, I am hopeful; oh, so hopeful.

Do I Smash the Mirror?

2007-01-19T11:03:00.000-05:00

So a couple days ago I noticed this review for a new book about T. S. Eliot. I read through it, and the book sounds pretty interesting, possibly worth a pickup, identifying the concept of the "buried life" as a recurrent theme in all of Eliot's work and using both famous and more obscure poems to demonstrate this. And then the bomb drops.

T. S. Eliot was anti-Semitic.

I don't really know what to make of this. I've read the two poems mentioned in the review as the literary evidence of Eliot's views, but I didn't get that sense from the reading. Yes, he uses "the Jew" as an identifier, but I had assumed it was a more literary device, an instantly evocative, time-specific term much as Twain's use of "nigger." I suppose that could be my own naivety speaking.

I wonder if part of the reason why comic book characters retain their allure is because they remain essentially uncorruptible. This is not to say that they're perfect; perfection is, after all, perfectly boring. But the problems they face tend to be problems of identity, of isolation and of relevancy. You never find out that Superman was a racist or Batman a vicious homophobe.

I think the other reason why superheroes stay popular is that they have become mythical; that is, their stories are the among the only truly American myths (here we pause for the neat little fact that one of Superman's co-creators was Canadian). Superman is about a guy with incredible powers, yes, but it is (more importantly, to my mind) about where we, as a people, wish to evolve. I watched Superman Returns a few days ago, and I have to say, Singer nailed most of it. There were definitely a few "Superman = Jesus" scenes I could have done without, and a few scenes in general that I think could have been cut (I also kinda hate the "Superman is Lois's baby daddy!" sub-plot), but there were also so many moments which were absolutely perfect, references stretching all the way back to the very first comic book cover that Superman appeared on (the shot of him lowering Parker Posey's car to the ground, nose-first, echoes this cover).

Perhaps it is more illuminating of my own personality that I find the message of self-sacrifice and virtue for its own sake within Superman; perhaps it is true that our readings of any kind of literature always reveal more about ourselves than the work in question. Perhaps that is why I was unable to find the anti-Semitic meaning behind T. S. Eliot's words. I guess, given the option, I'd take that over, "I'm stupid."

False Idols

2007-01-18T12:04:00.000-05:00

So I have this friend here who, for some reason, keeps telling me I should consider auditioning for Canadian Idol, which is, of course, the Canadian (read: crappier) version of American Idol.

I'm not quite sure how to take it. On the one hand, yes, he is correct in saying I have relatively little to lose. On the other hand, I find it difficult to determine which would be more embarassing: to be cut in one of the early purges of the wholesale cattle call, or to make it on tv and then get cut. I am, of course, assuming that I'd be able to avoid coming across as an delusional no-talent, which might not be the best assumption to make.

I don't quite know why he keeps mentioning it, and it's beginning to irritate me. Yes, I could approach it as just another audition. No, I don't think I'd have much of a chance of winning - I don't think I have anywhere near a strong enough voice. I'm not being all falsely modest, I just think I have a realistic idea of what I sound like and what I'm capable of. Could I make it to the televised rounds? Possibly, I'm not too sure how strong the candidate fields are up here; I don't think I could in America. So, yes, that could potentially mean exposure. But how is that going to serve me in the future? Doors might open, but it would always be as, "the Canadian Idol contestant," at least until something else could legitimately be used to label me.

People do it, though, right? Is it self-indulgent and pretentious to say that there are certain things that I am unwilling to do? Should I suck it up, go and take whatever happens, especially since nothing is likely to happen? What the hell would I sing?

I feel really scatterbrained today; I can't even seem to focus enough on this to make it interesting. The feeling actually started late yesterday, but I haven't shaken it yet. Maybe a shower will help.

Sentinel

2007-01-17T09:32:00.000-05:00

Cold and silent, she stands at the window
pregnant with hope,
an empty vessel
waiting to be filled.

Snow falling on faces
silent whispers on eyelashes
munchings and crunchings of footsteps
warm burrows; safe and secure.

Quiet sentinel
here at the beginning of days
where stories begin
and lives entwine.

This was ours
is ours
will always be ours
if we want it so

and I do
I do
God help me,
I do.

God is a gambling trickster
a bored housewife
feeding the penny slots
waiting for her payoff

she pulls the lever
and watches our spinning dials
waiting to see if they line up
whirr whirr whirr

click
click
click
Jackpot?

The Altar

2007-01-16T19:49:00.000-05:00

I usually try to avoid shit like this. Consider it a bit of an experiment, I suppose.

whispering sheets
lamplight gleaming
hot breath
steaming windows
fumbling towards
ragged gasps
interlocking fingers
pleading cries
slippery center

hold me down
take me in
lift me up
make me yours
is it me?
or is it you?

moons exploding
suns imploding
vessels dilating
insistent brushes
pain blossoms
pleasure buds
future harvest
flowering spring
reap and sow

hold me down
take me in
lift me up
make me yours
is it me?
or is it you?

glassy eyed
glottal stop
air deprived
empty mind
swallow spit
claw at walls
surround me
pull me in

hold you down
take you in
lift you up
make you mine
is it you?
or is it me?

Yay Snow

2007-01-16T08:12:00.000-05:00

1. The Rebel Sell: Why the culture can't be jammed, Joseph Heath & Andrew Potter
2. The Complete Grimm's Fairy Tales, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm
3. Rabbit, Run, John Updike
4. Everything is Illuminated, Jonathan Safran Foer

Rabbit, Run was good. Really really good. I'd comment a bit more but it's way too early for thinking and I need to run anyways. Maybe another time.

The Farewell

2007-01-15T17:10:00.001-05:00

the closer we get to our destination
the further away from you I am
slip sliding away
is that what the song means?
I always wondered.
wheels humming on pavement
the staccato rhythms of dotted lines
fading into the distance
like you, fading behind me
fading beside me
hand in hand
together at last
the only way we can be
the only way we know how.
Words lie heavy on my tongue
I will not cheapen them
I will not cheapen you.
But,
oh,
how I long to say them
how easy it would be
and how hard it would make things.
You never asked me for anything
you never gave me anything
but your truth
and this is how I repay you.
I do bite my thumb, sir,
but I do not bite my thumb at you, sir.
We hold hands
but not too tight;
we both know the end of this dream is near.

...But I Keep Rolling On

2007-01-15T11:13:00.000-05:00

Writing is inherently an autobigraphical process. When people say, "Write what you know," they are not necessarily referring to physical circumstances. Facts can be researched, after all. No, what people mean is that the emotional circumstances of the characters you create have to mirror the ones you see and know in your life. This is not to say that every character has to be based on a single, specific individual; in my experience the people I write about tend to be composites of people I know.

I had a conversation recently with a friend, who also writes, about the responsibility an author has to the people in their lives upon whom their writing is based. She mentioned that she had written several things that she would never publish or perform, for fear of hurting the people upon whom the work was based.

I don't know that I agree with that. Personally, I have enough problems with censoring and doubting myself without extending it to the things I write. When I write or when I perform anything about a relationship, I don't see any way to avoid having an observer with whom I have been in a relationship think it's written about them, or performed with them as the subtext. And they would be right - no matter the physical details, I will plagiarize my own emotional content to make the character more real. So in some way, shape or form, my feelings for that person will be expressed through the character. They might be positive, they might be negative, they might be illogical. But they will be as honest as I can make them.

And yet, it is true that as a member of society, it is right and good to hold things back from people. There are some things that no person deserves to hear, there are things that can be borne in the interest of society. If everyone sought instant gratification for all their wants, society would not exist. All art that concerns itself with the individual is inherently antisocial in the literal definition of the term, stripping it of its negative connotation - it is, after all, preoccupied with the individual. Perhaps it is this preoccupation within the art itself that has made artists so tortured in modern times; you don't hear stories about Michelangelo or Da Vinci crying in their wine about some girl they really liked who wouldn't go to the prom with them.

This raises an interesting question - which me is more "real", which is more truly "me"? The me free of societal cares and whims? Or the more controlled me that manages to get along with society?