It's usually a good time to add to your music library if you're looking forward to a long flight. So the night before heading out to the East Coast, I browsed itunes looking for something to download before boarding the plane early the next morning. Can't remember how but I stumbled across Marc Cohn's "Join the Parade."
I immensely enjoyed his heartfelt post-divorce album, Burning The Daze. (see also Greg Laswell's "Through Toledo" for your post-divorce music needs), but last I heard he had been shot in the head during an attempted robbery in Denver after a gig. He had had something of a bout with writer's block, then felt some connection to his situation and the rebuilding of New Orleans after Katrina, resulting in a beautiful album with several memorable tracks. Now it shoudl be mentioned, I downloaded In Raibows by Radiohead (disappointing...although I ought to confess I'm almost never in the mood for Radiohead) at the same time, and have since downloaded the Ryan Adams fun little EP "Follow the Lights," but am still bumping to Cohn on my way to work. It strikes me he has thoughtful lyrics, is not concerned with image or defiance or making any kind of scene, and still creates music with substance. There is a tinge of gospel in his stuff, a hint of Beatles, the occasional Catholic sensibility (themes of grace and recurring religious imagery) but with a laid back vibe. Definitely low BPMs. So, it turns out I'm more adult contemporary than Radiohead fan. Should I keep this quiet? Does this mean I can never move to Silverlake? Time will tell. I was hooked from the first song (they call them "tracks" in the biz), except for the one couplet that is a little too self-referential (listen for it). It's called Listening to Levon, and it's about how he was young, on a date with a beautiful girl, but constantly distracted from conversation and make out session by Levon on the radio, a reference to Levon Helm, and, judging by the walk-down in the song, an allusion to the song "The Weight" by The Band. To quote the artist formerly known as Jewel, "I've been there/ God, I've been there."
Friday, November 23, 2007
Meandering thoughts on writing, McCarthy, and the Coen Brothers' "No Country for Old Men"
I’m drawn to ask the question: what makes good writing? Perhaps a deeper question is: what makes good art? Maybe these days the answers are perforce subjective, at least on some level. I’d have to then, for me, good art confronts something deep, something elemental in the human condition. If you’re of a certain persuasion, you can’t help but see suffering as part of the equation. Melville, Faulkner, Conrad, Hemingway. Each of these writers confronted the reality of suffering, confronted something deep about the human condition. They peered into the abyss, sought out that encounter at the heart of things. Conrad found only an unspeakable darkness there, no order, just darkness. Hemingway found nothing: “nada, who art in nada, hallowed be thy name.” This is not the Eastern sense of nothingness, of non-being from which being springs, this is simply, well, nothing. Every important writer wrestles with this essential human existential question: Is there an order to the world, does life have meaning? Conrad and Hemingway seem to suggest that, ultimately, there is no order save that which humans contrive, that which we establish through self-assertion. This may be bastardizing things, but this sounds a bit like Sartre and the atheist existentialists.
Soooo, where does McCarthy fit in here? And why am I unfailingly and unrelentingly drawn to his work? I suppose it is the way in which he directly confronts these issues. Ultimately, I think, McCarthy answers that there is in fact order in the universe, an underlying mystery, but it is one from which we have become alienated, which we do not attend to.
His recent book “No Country For Old Men” has been adapted for the screen by the Coen brothers, and I waited four hours at the Arclight in Hollywood to see it, amidst the din and cacophony of the AFI festival, a few trips to Amoeba and back and forth to kill time and not spend money, looking at the posters of what appear to be good movies out about now (Gone Baby Gone, Into the Wild, I’m Not There, Across The Universe). Finally into the theater, front row center, the only seat left in the house when I bought my ticket (Arclight has assigned seating).
A preview for what looked like a very good French film called “The Bell Diver and the Butterfly” (or some such).
I had read No Country For Old Men twice and so knew something of what to expect in the story. The film was surprisingly faithful to the text and dialogue of the book, save for some clips here and there. Some of the talk of fate and identity between Moss and the girl at the hotel toward the end is left out and the scene simply fades to black. Watching a movie at the Arclight is an experience unto itself, with the lengthy intro to the movie by a theater employee, and likely a film student from across the street (LA Film School). Watched The Darjeeling Limited a few weeks back there and none other than Jason Schwartzmann and friends were in attendance. That damn song “This Time Tomorrow” by the Kinks from the soundtrack is still in my head four weeks later. Anyway, back to the film at hand.
The story’s violence is certainly there in the book, but of course takes on a more visceral feel visually portrayed onscreen. The Coen’s milk the witty dialogue from the book for comedy, but there is also underlying seriousness and the occasional profound turn of phrase that was lost on the audience, who expected to laugh at the down home Southern men with their slow drawl. While that element is there, some of the profundity was missed, it seems. McCarthy turns a somewhat stock plot (man finds a stack of money in a drug deal gone wrong) into a meditation on the state of our current soul. There seem to be two villains in the film. The first, and perhaps most obvious from the outset is human greed and corruption. The enemy within, if you will, and I will, as cliché as it sounds. McCarthy seems to suggest that our humanity and dignity is conferred in relationship, in community. Similarly, it is taken, as we become increasingly (the film is ambiguous here) estranged from each other, and dehumanized as a result. Is there a more powerful symbol of dehumanization than the cattle gun as murder weapon of choice? Which brings us to the second villain: Anton Chigurrh (a name which looks suspiciously close to Anti-Christ, hinting at the apocalyptic nature of the story, to be more overtly laid out in last year’s “The Road.”) Chigurrh is a somewhat flatter version of Blood Meridian’s Judge Holden, an Evil Genius. He is a personification of an evil deeper than greed or ambition or human capacity for corruption. He is like a law of entropy. He is destructive chance. He operates according to a code, if a brutal, inhuman one. The only hope or redemption he offers, the only escape from untimely death is a coin toss, although those he has promised to kill, been comissioned to kill, who hunt him or slight him, automatically feel his wrath. Not so with Ed Tom Bell, the "impartial" sherrif, the only outside perspective, a kind of steward figure who sees a bigger picture, one of deterioration and increasing alienation, an increased evil (although this is view later contradicted by Bell's confidant toward the end, who seems to suggest evil and human violence is, was, and always will be).
In the opening monologue, Tommy Lee Jones’ (Has he ever had a bad performance? He was superb in his own “Three Burials,” “In The Valley of Elah” and now this) Ed Tom Bell, (Bell? Warning?) the film’s moral compass, expounds on the deterioration of things in his county. The shift from neighborliness to murder and lawlessness. He attributes this to a loss of attention to manners, a loss of reverence on the part of the younger generation.
In spite of the story’s bleakness, there is a faint dream of hope, a kind of shalom, at the end, an instance of grace almost. For McCarthy, it seems, redemption does not necessarily come in confronting the evil (as the sheriff retires), but in accepting it as a part of life, and doing what we can to work against it, through attention to land, to domestic responsibility (?), through stewardship.
There’s a dissertation waiting to happen on the idea of Shalom in relationship to Cormac McCarthy. From the dream sequence in the beautifully haunting “The Crossing” in which beast and man coexist and run and frolic together. One could make a case that McCarthy’s entire body of work, from Outer Dark to Suttree to All The Pretty Horses to The Road traces the extent of the human estrangement from the central mystery of life, and our suffering as a result.
All this even leaves out perhaps the most central aspect of McCarthy’s work – his craftsmanship as a writer, his command of language and texture, which at times elevates to the level of poetry, with its music and cadence. He uses vowels like a jazz musician, as if to show off. It’s like an athlete or an artist who goes on riffs and tangents and plays just to show their superiority.
Here a lyrical passage from Suttree reflecting McCarthy’s meditation on doubles, a recurring image: “In the long arcade of the bus station footfalls come back like laughter. He marches darkly toward his darkly marching shape in the glass of the depot door. His fetch come up from life’s other side like an autoscopic hallucination, Suttree and Antisuttree, hand reaching to the hand. The door swung back and he entered the waiting room. The shapes of figures sleeping on the wooden benches lay like laundry. In the men’s room an elderly pederast leaning against a wall.”
Match that
Soooo, where does McCarthy fit in here? And why am I unfailingly and unrelentingly drawn to his work? I suppose it is the way in which he directly confronts these issues. Ultimately, I think, McCarthy answers that there is in fact order in the universe, an underlying mystery, but it is one from which we have become alienated, which we do not attend to.
His recent book “No Country For Old Men” has been adapted for the screen by the Coen brothers, and I waited four hours at the Arclight in Hollywood to see it, amidst the din and cacophony of the AFI festival, a few trips to Amoeba and back and forth to kill time and not spend money, looking at the posters of what appear to be good movies out about now (Gone Baby Gone, Into the Wild, I’m Not There, Across The Universe). Finally into the theater, front row center, the only seat left in the house when I bought my ticket (Arclight has assigned seating).
A preview for what looked like a very good French film called “The Bell Diver and the Butterfly” (or some such).
I had read No Country For Old Men twice and so knew something of what to expect in the story. The film was surprisingly faithful to the text and dialogue of the book, save for some clips here and there. Some of the talk of fate and identity between Moss and the girl at the hotel toward the end is left out and the scene simply fades to black. Watching a movie at the Arclight is an experience unto itself, with the lengthy intro to the movie by a theater employee, and likely a film student from across the street (LA Film School). Watched The Darjeeling Limited a few weeks back there and none other than Jason Schwartzmann and friends were in attendance. That damn song “This Time Tomorrow” by the Kinks from the soundtrack is still in my head four weeks later. Anyway, back to the film at hand.
The story’s violence is certainly there in the book, but of course takes on a more visceral feel visually portrayed onscreen. The Coen’s milk the witty dialogue from the book for comedy, but there is also underlying seriousness and the occasional profound turn of phrase that was lost on the audience, who expected to laugh at the down home Southern men with their slow drawl. While that element is there, some of the profundity was missed, it seems. McCarthy turns a somewhat stock plot (man finds a stack of money in a drug deal gone wrong) into a meditation on the state of our current soul. There seem to be two villains in the film. The first, and perhaps most obvious from the outset is human greed and corruption. The enemy within, if you will, and I will, as cliché as it sounds. McCarthy seems to suggest that our humanity and dignity is conferred in relationship, in community. Similarly, it is taken, as we become increasingly (the film is ambiguous here) estranged from each other, and dehumanized as a result. Is there a more powerful symbol of dehumanization than the cattle gun as murder weapon of choice? Which brings us to the second villain: Anton Chigurrh (a name which looks suspiciously close to Anti-Christ, hinting at the apocalyptic nature of the story, to be more overtly laid out in last year’s “The Road.”) Chigurrh is a somewhat flatter version of Blood Meridian’s Judge Holden, an Evil Genius. He is a personification of an evil deeper than greed or ambition or human capacity for corruption. He is like a law of entropy. He is destructive chance. He operates according to a code, if a brutal, inhuman one. The only hope or redemption he offers, the only escape from untimely death is a coin toss, although those he has promised to kill, been comissioned to kill, who hunt him or slight him, automatically feel his wrath. Not so with Ed Tom Bell, the "impartial" sherrif, the only outside perspective, a kind of steward figure who sees a bigger picture, one of deterioration and increasing alienation, an increased evil (although this is view later contradicted by Bell's confidant toward the end, who seems to suggest evil and human violence is, was, and always will be).
In the opening monologue, Tommy Lee Jones’ (Has he ever had a bad performance? He was superb in his own “Three Burials,” “In The Valley of Elah” and now this) Ed Tom Bell, (Bell? Warning?) the film’s moral compass, expounds on the deterioration of things in his county. The shift from neighborliness to murder and lawlessness. He attributes this to a loss of attention to manners, a loss of reverence on the part of the younger generation.
In spite of the story’s bleakness, there is a faint dream of hope, a kind of shalom, at the end, an instance of grace almost. For McCarthy, it seems, redemption does not necessarily come in confronting the evil (as the sheriff retires), but in accepting it as a part of life, and doing what we can to work against it, through attention to land, to domestic responsibility (?), through stewardship.
There’s a dissertation waiting to happen on the idea of Shalom in relationship to Cormac McCarthy. From the dream sequence in the beautifully haunting “The Crossing” in which beast and man coexist and run and frolic together. One could make a case that McCarthy’s entire body of work, from Outer Dark to Suttree to All The Pretty Horses to The Road traces the extent of the human estrangement from the central mystery of life, and our suffering as a result.
All this even leaves out perhaps the most central aspect of McCarthy’s work – his craftsmanship as a writer, his command of language and texture, which at times elevates to the level of poetry, with its music and cadence. He uses vowels like a jazz musician, as if to show off. It’s like an athlete or an artist who goes on riffs and tangents and plays just to show their superiority.
Here a lyrical passage from Suttree reflecting McCarthy’s meditation on doubles, a recurring image: “In the long arcade of the bus station footfalls come back like laughter. He marches darkly toward his darkly marching shape in the glass of the depot door. His fetch come up from life’s other side like an autoscopic hallucination, Suttree and Antisuttree, hand reaching to the hand. The door swung back and he entered the waiting room. The shapes of figures sleeping on the wooden benches lay like laundry. In the men’s room an elderly pederast leaning against a wall.”
Match that
Friday, November 2, 2007
A Day in the Life of an LA High School Teacher
Ok, not a normal day maybe but a day nonetheless. So, we wannabe artist types are known for trying anything to kickstart the creative juices. Some Artist Way morning pages sounded like a good idea, but to have time for that I'd have to get up at 5:45. Oh well, the price of fame. So on Tuesday, I get up at quarter to six, write three pages, make some coffee, a sandwich, grab a bottle of water and head off to work by quarter to 7. Once at work, I have all six periods, incuding basketball. I want the kids to do well on their assessment essay, which hardly anyone finished in the previous lesson, soooo take some time, finish up. I had my service workers make copies and enter grades. I graded work, and tried to do some meaningless BTSA busy work during my conference period. I let the kids play 5 on 5 scrimmages during the Tuesday shortened basketball period. Mind you, we have yet to receive permission for a local gym, so we're out on the dirty playground behind the school right next to the 101 freeway. Mmm, nothing like some good exhaust in the bronchi. It's time to announce who's on varsity and who's not. Problem is, one kid's suspended, another is on the verge of being expelled. We don't have jerseys yet ($170 each) and I'm trying to collect cash for those. Half the varsity hopefuls don't have their paperwork turned in, and two have no health insurance (mandatory), and are taking their sweet old time getting it. I also have 35 kids in the class. I don't want to dirty any of the newly donated basketballs on this dirty surface. Anyway, the JV kids play hard, try to impress. The Varsity consists of a mix of hard players, prima donnas, emotionally unstable first-timers who can't take criticism or hard fouls and immediately act out. Afters school, I did some grading, read some Bill Simmons on espn.com then headed to the rec center to meet some players for shoot around and pick up games with the Chinatown locals. We spent about two hours there, then I dropped a student off in Pico-Union and headed home. Here's where it gets interesting. My friend Jeremy Seifert from No Little Kindness calls me up with VIP tickets for the Neil Young concert at Nokia Center. Hmmm. I'm tired and achy from basketball, getting up early, the long work day. It's 8 o'clock. I could conceivably be in bed in an hour and a half. But I haven't seen Young live. I haven't been out for a while. How much again? Free. Alright. I'm there.
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
Neil Young and Dumpsters
Sooo, I played basketball after school with some of the kids at Downtown Magnets, as if I needed confirmation I was out of shape. Get home, Karla's at work. Get a phone call from Jeremy, of No Little Kindness fame. Says he has tickets to Neil Young at the Kodak Theater. Haven't seen Jeremy for a while, nor had hopes to go to a concert anytime soon, what with first year marriage budget and all. How much? Free. Can I pass that up? No. Plus I haven't been out after dark in a while. It's like being in Middle School, only with fewer phone calls. It's 7:30. Concert starts at 8:15. Screw it. Let's go. He swings by in a beat up Volvo, the glove compartment door keeps falling into my lap...the jerry-rigged latch out of three pieces of tape isn't working. We head the wrong way on the 210. It seems we have to pick up some tickets in Covina first. We make it quick, like clockwork we meet our contact at the in and out off the freeway, then head down the 10 into LA. I call Rob on the way, but he is at an art gallery chatting up some woman who wants to get into publishing and is looking for some new writing. He's inspired. No time for Neil Young. We get to the Nokia, park underneath in what can only be described as way beyond hoopdie status. The parking employees raise their eyebrows, we park and exit undaunted. We meet Beast, Jeremy's friend with amputated (?) legs, from just above the knees down. He walks on prosthetics and we haggle with a fellow looking for our fourth ticket and parlay the sale into one beer apiece at the ridiculously priced concession stand. Neil is halfway through his set. The crowd looks to be a mix of people from the valley and the OC. Definitely white bread. Odd mix of people maybe three miles from my school site. Two young men in front of us draw the ushers' attention with their glowing rolled paper and rising plumes of smoke in the indoor theater. The end of the acoustic set is delectable. The electric set from the new release, the lame-duck Chrome Dreams II (Young is hit or miss these days) almost puts me to sleep, nary a hook to be found, just 12 minutes of guitar fuzz. But he's got some energy. Some encore songs and we head out. Back to Beast's, who works at USC, where three day old, caked and crusty bowls of half eaten guacamole lie on counters with cockroaches scurrying underneath as his roommates sit on the porch and the hazy night sky of Los Angeles rolls past overhead, and I am reminded of college apartments in white trash towns where untold drug dealers and small time hoods stashing disposable cell phones roam uninhibited. We spend 15 minutes, as Jeremy tells of his job and Finn, his young son, who pines for Bob Dylan. We head back to Pasadena talking of marriage and sacrifice and he swerves into the lot behind Trader Joe's for "one last stop." We are now officially dumpster diving. He pulls out flowers, red bell peppers, a sack of potatoes, oregano, tomatoes, chicken, aubergines, all still shrink wrapped and pretty much lying on top of the dumpster. That's Jeremy. Ever the energetic pragmatist. He jumps back in the car, giddy "That's my shopping for the week." Waste not, want not.
Friday, October 26, 2007
In other news
In slightly less meandering and heady news, there are several things going on around LA this weekend. It's the City of Angels Film Festival, sponsored by our very own Fuller and Tribe, among others. It's also AJ. reading "The Year of Living Biblically" at Vroman's, which I am interested in. Meanwhile, The Boss and Neil Young are coming to town. There are maybe four movies out I haven't seen but would like to(Michael Clayton, Dan in Real Life, and Gone Baby Gone...although I am tired of simply consuming movies as entertainment instead of using them selectively as guides to live more deeply...sorry, sorry, here I go again) Unfortunately, on our current budget, for some reason I have such limited monthly resources that, after two nights out with friends this month, and the odd trip to starbucks I am now $80 over budget for the month. Netflix anyone? Sure, thank you. Also, USC plays Oregon and the World Series is on. Did I forget anything? Oh yeah, I'm going through that weird once every six months phase where I wish I was a man about town in LA, drinking cocktails in swank, old hollywood, dimly lit bars, ignoring the cigarette policy, instead of an ill-tempered, morose, balding, out of shape malcontent whose band just broke up and who can't play an instrument well enough to make music by himself. Hmmm. There's the power of positive thinking for you.
Salvation
There's a biblical idea of conversion, metanoia, which literally means "a turning." Traditionally, this means a turning from darkness to light, from sin (death), to virtue (life). In my own life, I've tried to move past the confining understandings of a moral piety (as valuable as that may be), finding that, like Blake, it means there are too many priests "binding with briars my joys and desires." This is not a sweeping injunction to hedonism (although Blake placed emphasis on sexual energy, or at least sexual tension, which I would certainly include in any "unified theory of the good life") I certainly recognize the value of boundaries in in growing in maturity, in developing a spiritual life, etc. but I don't buy the injunctions of the morality brigade either. That doesn't resonate with me as much as an injunction to "suck the marrow out of life." Hm. I apply that to my current situation. Now, for some, sucking the marrow out of life leads to visions of treks round the world and gold medals extreme sports, this is partially the result of advertising and a culture that values the vitality of youth and a sense of possibility as the highest good. All for that, in some ways, but of course, we're all different. For myself "sucking the marrow out of life" brings to mind other quotes about "a life half lived" etc. I recognize the need to embodied, physical experience, even the necessity for novel experience, but first and foremost "the marrow" would be depth, the search for it, the immersion in it, through attentive reading, writing conversation. I get more excited about new lines of thinking, this being for me a kind of spiritual journey, more deeply into truth. Of course, not all new ideas are truthful ideas and lead us more deeply, which calls for a discernment. But right now, living as the embodiment of modern man's disconnection and fragmentation, pretty much any idea seems like a cloud worth chasing. I teach at a downtrodden High School facility for the LAUSD. There are no windows in this renovated radio station. We are right by two freeways. on the edge of downtown on the border between Chinatown and Echo Park. The air is heavy. While there can be moments of joy, these underpriveleged kids have to settle for reality as it presents itself. This is not only their daily reality, it is a Magnet School, a step up from their local school, whether Jordan or Locke or wherever. Things are more peaceful, the school smaller, less gang activity. While frequent drug use and even some prostitution is known to occur, it is by and large a more inviting place than many other schools. But still, it is an overcrowded inner city institution with an unhealthy environment, unhealthy food, the occasional mouse, rat, or cockroach, with no thought of the concept of holism. A friend of mine has a blog entry about his stepdaughter's high school in Santa Monica (of course). It sounds not only like a good high school, it sounds like college education might be modeled after it, as a place of holistic, critical thinking. What might this model look like in my own context. Would there be any carry over of ideas? And in this meaningless dail;y drudgery of trying to get 9th and 10th graders familiar with the ideas of persuasion, exposition, and literary analysis (ideas which have zero relevance to their everyday lives), I feel like we run a holding pen sometimes, even as our new principal institutes positive changes, and my honors classes attend to their tests at the moment. They have little sense of what it takes to succeed academically. I wonder how well even the honors students are prepared for real college work. I wonder about the vested interest of the dominant class in having a local, uneducated workforce, even as we trumpet the virtues of affordable college education for all. On the other hand, a college education is also not for everybody, and I definitely believe we should have some sort of apprenticeship and trade school model, practicums and that sort of thing for those whose lives should not be limited and defined by their academic abilities alone. I am tempted to visit the Crossroads school to see if there is any valuable information I can glean and adapt to my own context, but I am also in the midst of basketball season (37 kids in the class from which the team is drawn, 2 of my best players are on the verge of being expelled, 1 of whom is in trouble with the law, I still have no gym to practice in, only a small outdoor court that is heavily polluted and right next to a freeway), I'm not finished with my completely pointless BTSA busywork for the District Teacher training program. I would recommend a mentorship program, where veteran teachers are paired up with 2-3 new teachers who walk through with them, observing, improving, attending seminars together, giving feedback, instead of toting these heavy binders so full, they're impossible to sift through, let alone master. The information overload is insane. There are fifty going paradigms of what to do, how to do it, how to assess, how to plan, how to reflect on your planning, how to implement the planning, how to use technology, how to use rubrics, how to include variations for race, age, etc. How to engage students in reading, how to engage special needs students, gifted students, how to communicate with their families, how to structure instruction, how to layer instruction, how to reflect on the layering of instruction, how to reduce the achievement gap, how to follow the state standards, how to get the most out of your students, how to start your lesson, how to end the lesson, how to teach writing to English Learners, how to teach reading to the young Black male. I feel like Poseidon might also be the god of education. All the while, sifting through this endless sea of perspectives, different methods and paradigms, with grading and busywork and mouthy kids (and some that really like you), you feel like you're making no difference at all in the lives of the kids, not completely sure what the point of education should be, or if your following the right path. This has little to do with metanoia and the Bible, mind you, but it makes it hard to penetrate deeply in a search for the truth. Things remain frustratingly superficial, with this behemoth of a job, and perhaps my own need to be in a structured setting with space to explore and guides to point the way toward depth and truth. Where have all the mentors gone? Where are the mystics?
Wednesday, August 1, 2007
Chars and Ems
Soooo, I receive two notable friend requests on facebook in one day. One from the lovely Charlotte Hall, from FIS, of course, and the other from spunky Ems Crotti, who came to visit Charlotte Grigg at FIS for two months, but is secretly from Adelaide (Pembroke, if you must know...and a mighty good netball team they used to field, not to mention their drama department, especially the 97 production of Muriel's Wedding). Why do they always wait til after you get married to send the facebook friend request? Why?! It’s always the same thing! For those of you who’ve fallen out of contact with them, Charlotte is teaching religion in the UK and Emily has just accepted a lead design gig in Melbourne. Both looking great. Ah, the memories of U3s and S5s, Zigarettenautomaten, Sachses and Buschwieses past, Jaggard spilling beer on some unsuspecting GI, Hicog drug dealers mill about it tattered clothes, Brendan spilling Faxe and hugging a tree for balance, Blake passed out face first in the grass, mud, and pine needles, someone gleefully tossing someone else’s sweater into the flames, while the lost and displaced children stumble, puke, and quote movies to each other in the dying embers of the Bad Homburg night, Jon puking on Alex Prouty's drop top beamer from an overhead window at one of those end of year Alquist bashes. Thinking of them is bittersweet of course, because I miss them both, but will rarely see them. Not to mention somehow either Bryce or Dave fits into the picture in some of these memories. Charlotte is visiting some of the FIS people in Boston (soon?), while Ems has been back and forth between Sydney and Florence for a while. What a world traveler. =) Speaking of which, anyone have a line on Azadeh Rezaiean (sp?) Where she's living now? Eddie? Anyone?
cheers
cheers
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Thoughts on Treasure Island and Factory Girl
Seemingly no connection on the surface, but, well, we’ll see about that. Since getting married, or, rather, slightly before, I’ve been on something of a nostalgia kick, perhaps exacerbated by the recent Transformers release and my subsequent discussions with my brothers about pop culture from our youth. Disney’s Treasure Island. This movie must have come out in 1950 or so, starring Bobby Driscoll as the young Jim Hawkins. This is the first movie I remember seeing, and it was captivating as a child, however campy it comes across now. There is still a genuine sense of danger as Hawkins is being chased around the soundstages and yells “one more step, Mr. Hands, and I’ll blow your brains out.” Beautiful stuff! The elements of good adventure stories are all there. The movie seems a little cliché now, the fight scenes don’t exactly stand the test of time, but I remember seeing the movie and reading the frayed leaflet book as a 12 year old. I wonder if the rum and the violence might be seen as a little too much for the Barney crowd these days. Don’t have a kid, so I don’t know. The unforgettable character from this version is, of course, Long John Silver, played by Robert Newton, who strikes the right balance between comforting and menacing. And he has huge eyes. “Them that dies’ll be the lucky ones” on close up. Classic. Not to get too heady, but there is also the substitute father figure thing going on in this movie, doctor on the one hand, Long John on the other, vying for the boy’s attention in some way? Vice and virtue? I don’t want to push this too far, but the father figure element is certainly there. (Is it just me or is the surrogate father/son thing all over these days? See any of the last few Scorsese movies? Maybe this is a recurring trope in all of Scorsese. What it is with artists and father issues?) Instrumental, of course, to the story, and to any children’s story is that the story turns on a crucial choice made by the child. The message has to be, for children to stay interested, that their choices matter, that choice is important, and that they can play a crucial role. This also lies at the heart of every Harry Potter movie: choice. I haven’t read the books, so I can’t speak there. In Treasure Island, Hawkins chooses to return to the ship and take it back from the pirates. He enters a dangerous situation for the greater good. Heroes are marked by courage, so when he does this, he gains the audience’s respect and sympathy. Potter is downright biblical in its repeated insistence on the responsibility of the individual to make moral choices through acts of self-sacrifice. I also noticed several rip-offs from this movie that would later find their way into Peter Pan, the map, the description of the map, some of the terminology, etc. What is perhaps less known is that Peter Pan was fully filmed with none other than Bobby Driscoll as Peter and then animators rotoscoped over the actors a la Ralph Bakshi. Here’s where is gets interesting, and begins to sound a little too Britney/Lohan. Already having an Academy Award fro Window before Treasure Island and Peter Pan, Driscoll made a few other films with Disney, hit puberty and then stopped getting roles. He got into speed and heroin, got married, had three kids, got divorced, ended up in New York in the mid 60’s, made one more movie in the factory or somewhere similar, and was finally found dead by two young girls alone in an abandoned tenement in Greenwich. Of Hollywood, he said, “they brought me in on a satin pillow and threw me out with the trash.” Or thereabouts. So what happened? Where was choice? Would things be different if only Bobby could go to Promises in Malibu? Did he, too, have father issues?
Edie Sedgwick most certainly did. At least that’s the argument the film advances the most. Perhaps molested by her father, taken advantage of by her substitute father/brother Andy Warhol, Sedgwick becomes a Holly Golightly-ish It girl in New York in the mid-60’s. The film is a little shallow in its portrayals, but serves as a starting point for people interested in the whole Factory/Chelsea Hotel scene of the 60’s.
I heard a lot growing up that “that’s what drugs do to you,” but of course the drugs are there for something else, to kill the pain, or postpone confronting the pain or internal spiritual lack. There’s always something else going on. At some point, you hope, an individual makes a choice, or recognizes that they live in community. While some truth needs to be confronted or acknowledged, it also needs to be moved past. What is the element that makes some people wiser and humbler through suffering, able to show compassion with others, while some are simply obliterated by it? If not Lindsay and Britney, then Judy Garland and Bobby Driscoll. What is that element that allows people to handle suffering in a mature way? Is it worse for child celebrities, cloaked as they are in a shallow, meaningless world, where everyone caters to them, but saps them as well? Are they unable to stay grounded? Sedgwick’s story is certainly tragic, and her father seemingly deserves much of the blame, but at what point do you make a choice? Interesting that both Driscoll from Treasure Island and Sedgwick didn’t survive the tumultuous 60’s. Both went to New York looking for a fresh start, both made their way through the eccentric circles of The Factory and experimental filmmaking. Both succumbed to their drug habits. Maybe the heroism lies in confrontation. Neither wanted to confront whatever it was that made them turn to drugs in the first place. Both wanted to forget, instead of confronting and somehow redeeming the suffering. Oh well, this is getting rambling and didactic. Two more movies left.
Edie Sedgwick most certainly did. At least that’s the argument the film advances the most. Perhaps molested by her father, taken advantage of by her substitute father/brother Andy Warhol, Sedgwick becomes a Holly Golightly-ish It girl in New York in the mid-60’s. The film is a little shallow in its portrayals, but serves as a starting point for people interested in the whole Factory/Chelsea Hotel scene of the 60’s.
I heard a lot growing up that “that’s what drugs do to you,” but of course the drugs are there for something else, to kill the pain, or postpone confronting the pain or internal spiritual lack. There’s always something else going on. At some point, you hope, an individual makes a choice, or recognizes that they live in community. While some truth needs to be confronted or acknowledged, it also needs to be moved past. What is the element that makes some people wiser and humbler through suffering, able to show compassion with others, while some are simply obliterated by it? If not Lindsay and Britney, then Judy Garland and Bobby Driscoll. What is that element that allows people to handle suffering in a mature way? Is it worse for child celebrities, cloaked as they are in a shallow, meaningless world, where everyone caters to them, but saps them as well? Are they unable to stay grounded? Sedgwick’s story is certainly tragic, and her father seemingly deserves much of the blame, but at what point do you make a choice? Interesting that both Driscoll from Treasure Island and Sedgwick didn’t survive the tumultuous 60’s. Both went to New York looking for a fresh start, both made their way through the eccentric circles of The Factory and experimental filmmaking. Both succumbed to their drug habits. Maybe the heroism lies in confrontation. Neither wanted to confront whatever it was that made them turn to drugs in the first place. Both wanted to forget, instead of confronting and somehow redeeming the suffering. Oh well, this is getting rambling and didactic. Two more movies left.
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
...And we're back
So I got married, and yes, congratulations are in order. But first, I have been backlogged in blogs with planning, and honeymoon, and what not, sooo, below are three or four new ones. enjoy.
...didn't even know it...
By the by, I got a little poem published in a newer Journal I’ve had a link to off to the right here for some time: Relief Journal. So have a look at the journal and maybe even order a copy of Issue 4. Support the arts wherever you happen to live. That’s my Public Service Announcement for the day…the more you know…
Oh, yeah, Summer Blockbuster
Let’s pause for a second. Earlier, I said these albums were my Summer blockbuster. Right now, imdb.com and everywhere else has the current top films (we now evaluate our best films based on how much money they make, some of them sucker punches, because we go, not based on word of mouth or critics, but based on a trailer, a short, easily manipulated artifact – think of the Star Wars Prequels, good trailers, crappy movies). Presumably, the list includes I now pronounce you Chuck and Larry, a presumably unfunny film which is getting by on hype, marketing, driven mostly be the star power of Adam Sandler (our generation’s Jerry Lewis?), and the trailer. The list will also include Harry Potter 5 - a franchise sequel, and Transformers, a souped-up, Michael Bay nostalgia cash-in, now that the kids from the 80’s finally have some disposable income. I’m not interested in whether these movies were good or bad (according to many, Harry Potter 5 is quite good and Transformers is at least a guilty pleasure – at best the best film of all time, even better than Top Gun), their relative merits as high or low art, the visceral effect they have, whatever. What I am interested in is the machine surrounding these films. While we’re shelling out our 12 bucks plus popcorn and drink (the main profit for theaters), we’re subjected to ads for new films in the theater (posters, trailers) and outside the theater, bus stop placards, overhead billboards, online (Stardust already feels ubiquitous and it’s not even close to the release date) Now, the artifact is not the point, I myself have Summer blockbusters in the form of four albums I was eagerly awaiting. The point is…well, pointlessness, consumption. The merry-go-round of contemporary marketing, its salvation narrative. We place salvific properties on movies, books, music, projecting our desire for transcendence. The release date comes, we consume, but already our eye is on the next big thing, and we have the same conversations surrounding these things. I liked it, I didn’t like it as much as I thought I would. Really? I thought it was good. That actress just isn’t believable for me in that role. I thought it was really well edited. Some college professor writes a book of Jungian interpretation of the author’s work and we feel stupid for not having seen it all along. But mostly, the conversations stay at the level of subjective personal taste and go little further. Why did we like it? What part of us did it speak to? I was just at Blockbuster video, walking past several movies that spoke to me: Little Children, Children of Men, The Golden Child (kidding), what did these stories mean to me? Was it two hours in an air-conditioned place and nothing else? Mindless consumption? Indulgence? Did it stir my passions, change anything about my life, and by extension, the world? Having said all that, I just picked up three friggin movies at Blockbuster. Why? Habit? Temporary reprieve from loneliness? Learned passivity. I’ve decided I’ve got to reflect after each film to make the event a significant one. So, we have something to look forward to.
In no particular order:
1. Factory Girl
2. Prairie Home Companion
3. Zodiac
4. Treasure Island (I lied, I rented four)
In no particular order:
1. Factory Girl
2. Prairie Home Companion
3. Zodiac
4. Treasure Island (I lied, I rented four)
Music follow up/Summer Blockbuster
A while back I commented on a few albums I was excited about at the time:
1. the new Wilco Album
2. the new Ryan Adams Album
3. the new Josh Rouse Album
4. The new album by Jesse Malin (would it be insulting to call him Ryan Adams’ protégé?)
Anyway, the release dates for these have come and gone, and I am reminded of the cycle of consumption these days. Now, none of these albums are bad. None of them blow you out of the water, not exactly era-defining. Well, maybe, only time will tell. The Jesse Malin album is not bad, some rockable tracks here, some memorable lead guitar lines, about on par with his last album, maybe half a star less, if only for some of the re-tread. The new Wilco, I’ve heard bits and pieces, but haven’t gotten around to buying. This may or may not have to do with the fact that the bits and pieces didn’t blow me away enough to buy from itunes, or it may have to do with the fact that I wanted these albums on cd because my iradio hisses in the car and the local record store shut down (thanks a lot, downloaders), and I have to go way out of my way to buy CD’s, unless I want to shell out like 6 extra bucks at Borders, once I push and shove my way past all the Harry Potter types (more on that later). Things are complicated, as you can see.
First, as I listen to the singer-songwriter collection in itunes at the moment, I must say, it’s more fun to listen to this kind of music in a colder climate, something about soft acoustic music alleviates the bitter winter, or allows you to feel it more fully. But in spite of the prevalence of writers and musicians in this town, this sunshiney, happy-go-lucky, girls-in-Hollister, my-Bentley-is-bigger-than-yours-and-oh-my-God-the-Beaujolais-at-The-Little-Door-is-to-die-for crowd isn’t the most conducive to enjoying it. For example, I live in Pasadena. I love the album Say I am You by The Weepies. It takes me away to that special place. For some reason, when I listened to it at first, I thought of Seattle, or Portland, definitely the Pacific Northwest, nature, greenery, mountains, poetry, early sunsets, keeping warm against the cold, soft pink and gold sunsets, that sort of thing, only to find out they wrote they whole damn thing in, you guessed it, Pasadena. Oh well, that’ll teach me to be rooted in the here and now. (Ironically, today marks the release of Mandy Moore’s new album, which would otherwise be completely uninteresting news, if The Weepies hadn’t co-written 5 songs of the album with Mandy. I’m not sure how I feel about this yet. Does that make Mandy cool or The Weepies sell-outs? Hm, I’ll have to come back to this. Here’s hoping Dylan doesn’t co-write his next album with Ashlee Simpson. Maybe the Weepies were applying the John Ford moviemaking logic: one for them, one for me, one for them, one for me…or maybe they just really liked her in Saved. I’m sorry I can’t get over this.) Where was I?
Oh yeah, so anyway, these albums were to be my Summer blockbusters. Adams’ album gets a solid 4 out of 5, with two overly twangy, countrified, and frankly unlistenable songs knocking off one star. But besides those a strong album, maybe my favorite hangover album of the year. Not that I get hangovers. Ahem. Moving on. Jesse Malin gets a solid 3 and a half. Some good energy on the album. Obviously, I’ll have to go with an N/A on the Wilco album, somehow the vocals on the tracks I’ve heard don’t do it for me, not scratchy enough? I guess I’m still stuck on Summer Teeth and don’t want to let go. Which brings me to Josh Rouse. Josh, Josh, Josh. What happened? We can only infer. Like Ben Folds before him (Australia), Josh finds enlightenment on foreign shores. What happened exactly? These are the known facts. In 2003, little known indie musician drops what may have been the album of the decade (one guy’s opinion) called 1972. Taken with the previous Under The Cold Blue Stars and the successive Nashville, Joshy crafted a mini-oeuvre that could be in desert island top ten status. Really, they’re that good. What happens next? Allow me some conjecture here. Josh is a working musician, traveling the world, bringing British radio hosts to tears with his beautiful live renditions of his heart-rending songs, hobnobbing with celebs in Australia, yukking it up in Nashville. At some point, he tours Spain. The temperature’s right, the weed is good, the beer is cheap, maybe he loves “The Sun Also Rises” and fancies himself a Hemingway man, maybe he gets suckered into a time share talk, maybe he finds a local philly (Paz Suey?), maybe he thinks it’s neat how they lisp their ‘s’ sounds, as in “grathias, amigoth.” Whatever the case, he ditches Nashville for Spain. What follow is the lazily breathey offering “She’s Spanish, I’m American” and the subpar “Subtitulo,” which we should lovingly refer to as “Subparulo.” Not that either of them were bad, just not that great. And finally, Country Mouse, City House comes out. What’s a lazy introvert with most of this artist’s back catalog to do? Maybe it’s a timing thing, maybe I’ve come with unrealistic expectations, maybe I haven’t given the album a fair shake. I’m tempted to buy it on general principle, hey, it’s a Josh Rouse album. Then again, this might be strike three.
1. the new Wilco Album
2. the new Ryan Adams Album
3. the new Josh Rouse Album
4. The new album by Jesse Malin (would it be insulting to call him Ryan Adams’ protégé?)
Anyway, the release dates for these have come and gone, and I am reminded of the cycle of consumption these days. Now, none of these albums are bad. None of them blow you out of the water, not exactly era-defining. Well, maybe, only time will tell. The Jesse Malin album is not bad, some rockable tracks here, some memorable lead guitar lines, about on par with his last album, maybe half a star less, if only for some of the re-tread. The new Wilco, I’ve heard bits and pieces, but haven’t gotten around to buying. This may or may not have to do with the fact that the bits and pieces didn’t blow me away enough to buy from itunes, or it may have to do with the fact that I wanted these albums on cd because my iradio hisses in the car and the local record store shut down (thanks a lot, downloaders), and I have to go way out of my way to buy CD’s, unless I want to shell out like 6 extra bucks at Borders, once I push and shove my way past all the Harry Potter types (more on that later). Things are complicated, as you can see.
First, as I listen to the singer-songwriter collection in itunes at the moment, I must say, it’s more fun to listen to this kind of music in a colder climate, something about soft acoustic music alleviates the bitter winter, or allows you to feel it more fully. But in spite of the prevalence of writers and musicians in this town, this sunshiney, happy-go-lucky, girls-in-Hollister, my-Bentley-is-bigger-than-yours-and-oh-my-God-the-Beaujolais-at-The-Little-Door-is-to-die-for crowd isn’t the most conducive to enjoying it. For example, I live in Pasadena. I love the album Say I am You by The Weepies. It takes me away to that special place. For some reason, when I listened to it at first, I thought of Seattle, or Portland, definitely the Pacific Northwest, nature, greenery, mountains, poetry, early sunsets, keeping warm against the cold, soft pink and gold sunsets, that sort of thing, only to find out they wrote they whole damn thing in, you guessed it, Pasadena. Oh well, that’ll teach me to be rooted in the here and now. (Ironically, today marks the release of Mandy Moore’s new album, which would otherwise be completely uninteresting news, if The Weepies hadn’t co-written 5 songs of the album with Mandy. I’m not sure how I feel about this yet. Does that make Mandy cool or The Weepies sell-outs? Hm, I’ll have to come back to this. Here’s hoping Dylan doesn’t co-write his next album with Ashlee Simpson. Maybe the Weepies were applying the John Ford moviemaking logic: one for them, one for me, one for them, one for me…or maybe they just really liked her in Saved. I’m sorry I can’t get over this.) Where was I?
Oh yeah, so anyway, these albums were to be my Summer blockbusters. Adams’ album gets a solid 4 out of 5, with two overly twangy, countrified, and frankly unlistenable songs knocking off one star. But besides those a strong album, maybe my favorite hangover album of the year. Not that I get hangovers. Ahem. Moving on. Jesse Malin gets a solid 3 and a half. Some good energy on the album. Obviously, I’ll have to go with an N/A on the Wilco album, somehow the vocals on the tracks I’ve heard don’t do it for me, not scratchy enough? I guess I’m still stuck on Summer Teeth and don’t want to let go. Which brings me to Josh Rouse. Josh, Josh, Josh. What happened? We can only infer. Like Ben Folds before him (Australia), Josh finds enlightenment on foreign shores. What happened exactly? These are the known facts. In 2003, little known indie musician drops what may have been the album of the decade (one guy’s opinion) called 1972. Taken with the previous Under The Cold Blue Stars and the successive Nashville, Joshy crafted a mini-oeuvre that could be in desert island top ten status. Really, they’re that good. What happens next? Allow me some conjecture here. Josh is a working musician, traveling the world, bringing British radio hosts to tears with his beautiful live renditions of his heart-rending songs, hobnobbing with celebs in Australia, yukking it up in Nashville. At some point, he tours Spain. The temperature’s right, the weed is good, the beer is cheap, maybe he loves “The Sun Also Rises” and fancies himself a Hemingway man, maybe he gets suckered into a time share talk, maybe he finds a local philly (Paz Suey?), maybe he thinks it’s neat how they lisp their ‘s’ sounds, as in “grathias, amigoth.” Whatever the case, he ditches Nashville for Spain. What follow is the lazily breathey offering “She’s Spanish, I’m American” and the subpar “Subtitulo,” which we should lovingly refer to as “Subparulo.” Not that either of them were bad, just not that great. And finally, Country Mouse, City House comes out. What’s a lazy introvert with most of this artist’s back catalog to do? Maybe it’s a timing thing, maybe I’ve come with unrealistic expectations, maybe I haven’t given the album a fair shake. I’m tempted to buy it on general principle, hey, it’s a Josh Rouse album. Then again, this might be strike three.
Reflections on Easy Riders, Raging Bulls
I confess, the other day I rented other films from Videotheque, the beautiful, amazing, slightly pretentious video shop (it’s the part of town, not the shop itself, perhaps, that’s pretentious). Movies are sorted by decade, or star, or director, and of course, new stuff. Extensive foreign and arthouse and indie selections. I got the entire Wire series up to this point from there. Good stuff. This time, I rented a film from the Great Writers collection: on Dostoevsky, distributed by Kultur, an educational company, from whom I purchased films on the Augustan, Romantic, and Victorian poets. Not a bad collection, readings, biographies, scholars discussing both the work and historical context. Informative, insightful. Buuuut, the Dostoevsky video, which has been on my amazon.com wishlist for some time, was little more than a shallow biographical overview with no insight from scholars, and a confusing timeline. Not worth the cellophane it was printed on. I also rented Burden of Dreams, after sitting at a pretentious gathering, during which someone kept yelling “Fitzcarraldo!” and asking if anyone had seen Rescue Dawn, responding a little too quickly and mysteriously that “He’s pretty much the only one doing much these days” (italics mine) “Fassbinder’s dead, Wim’s not doing much these days.” We can infer in between cigarette puffs that HE is Werner Herzog, even if we haven’t seen Fitzcarraldo or Rescue Dawn, we at least have heard of the silly commentary on Grizzly Man, or heard about how Joaquin Phoenix was pulled to safety after driving off the road in The Hills (the Hollywood Hills to you, that is). Sooo, slightly annoyed with the smug pretentiousness of the conversation, and slightly genuinely interested in a supposed classic of documentary filmmaking, I rented the film, which had overtones of Hearts of Darkness, but ultimately was a little annoying, although, like the other jungle filmmaking doc, Herzog sounds like Coppola when discussing the moviemaking process as a kind of ontological act, an existential one, without which these men might as well not exist, one that gives them not just meaning, but being. Maybe I’m a shallow person, but I lost interest as soon as the electrifying Jason Robards and quirky 80’s Mick Jagger dropped out of the project and were replaced by the extremely unattractive Klaus Kinski. The name Fitzcarraldo (derived from Fitzgerald), pronounced by the strong German guttural accent was like fingernails on a chalk board. I know I am skipping the trials of the filming process, the singular genius and determination of an obsessive-romantic and his artistic process and the metaphoric parallels between Fitzcarraldo and Herzog, but I just wasn’t into it. Not to mention it was getting later in the day and I had an appointment, and had to drop off the movies. But earlier I had watched the real gem of the bunch: Easy Riders – Raging Bulls. This was a great film, insightful into the shift from Big Studio Hollywood through the brief Auteur Era of the late 60’s early 70’s to the contemporary Blockbuster/Corporation-driven era, ushered in, ironically, by members of the auteur group – Steven Spielberg with Jaws and George Lucas with Star Wars. For those of us born in the late 70’s or early 80’s, we don’t really know any different. Anyway, hip to social change and representing the cream of new talent and in defiance of social conventions, a group of young directors took Hollywood by storm in the early seventies, Bogdanovich, Hopper, Scorsese, Lucas, Spielberg, Coppola, Peckinpah, Ashby. Most of these succumbed to their own excesses, either artistically or chemically. The ones that made it were the ones who stayed away from the rampant substance abuse of the era. But one impression I was left with was the mythologizing of previous eras, the sexual liberation, the drugs, the parties, the incestuous relationships, and sometimes, the tragedies, the camaraderie. It didn’t sound that much different from my experience going to a private High School. But we somehow imagine these people had crazy experiences untouched before or since. What was once revolutionary now seems commonplace. Anyway, Ashby and Peckinpah succumbed to their own “inner demons,” read immaturity and inability to stay away from drugs, which first was “fuel, then a crutch, then their addiction.” Ain’t that the way. I must say, I love Ashby’s humor. Bogdanovich seemed like a good guy who had a sense of entitlement and an immaturity when it came to relationship, always falling in love with his leading lady. Roman Polanski seemed like an opportunistic, self-important asshole. Scorsese seemed like a likable guy who’s a little too obsessive compulsive and liked cocaine a little too much, but thankfully had a good career. Hopper is Hopper, and could have made a lot of good films, I think, if he had been able to tone it down. The film is vague about Coppolla’s drug use, but hints that he burned out. Seriously, has he made anything worthwhile since the 70’s? Spielberg and Lucas were the film geeks who were more about the movies than the lifestyle. What happened to Lucas that he felt the need to Disney-fy his first trilogy in the re-releases, (note: Sy Snootles, if a little weird, was cool, understated, acceptable, while the CGI and over-the-top Joh Yowza (Joh freakin Yowza?!?) sucked and dragged the movie into Saturday morning cartoon-land...we should have known then the prequels would suck...but the trailers looked to so good. agh!) make them more ridiculous and kiddy, and then withdraw all the funds he had deposited in the culture’s bank account in three short strokes. With the prequels, you feel he has lost touch, the performances are wooden, the stories are clichés instead of fresh, you feel its more about trying out new filmmaking technologies than about making good films. Jar Jar? Dex’s Diner? The Vader-as-whiny-Wuss/Frankenstein scene? Say it ain’t so. Lucas himself said it best in the 80s – a special effect without a story is pretty boring thing. The tragic thing is that he could have had the pick of the litter in terms of screenwriters or directors for the whole thing. He went it alone, no one in his camp had the balls to tell him it sucked, and the ship sinks. The only ones in the whole group still making fresh, relevant material are Spielberg and Scorsese. Anyway, not a bad documentary.
Thich Nhat Hanh and Mindfulness
I believe it was Graham Ward who said something like “all contemporary experiences are based on economic exchange.” This is a kind of fatalistic (realistic?) appraisal of the totalizing effects of the market in contemporary society. As a sometime pseudo-Christian-monastic-Zen-Luddite myself, I sometimes imagine it is possible to escape from this reality, to exercise meditation, to take a small bath with a cold glass of water, a few candles, making sure I breathe diaphragmatically, embracing the here and now, cultivating imagination and compassion and what not, and then it occurs to me that the directions for meditation were given me in classes that cost $919 apiece per quarter, in a slew of books that, taken together, cost roughly $500, the odd freely downloaded podcast, the water costs money to run in the bath tub, the candles cost money, the bic lighter I used to light them with and fall into a brief despair, before thinking: screw it, I feel better and more connected to myself and the world after my breathing and smiling activates a few beta waves (a trivialized version of what takes place). I’m left thinking – is there anything wrong with that? Is it only wrong when the mind begins reducing everything to price tags for personal gain. Is the corporate profit motive, the military industrial complex the devil? (By the way, watched Sicko the other night, great movie, and made me nostalgic about my Frankfurt days) On marketplace today, they rattled off some figures, Texas Instruments’ numbers are down, a few other tech stocks are down, people are wary, only there were some big winners, guess who? Defense stocks and Drug stocks. Hm. Here I am reminded of my older brother becoming an evangelist for medication in the nineties, convinced that half of society had treatable, brain-chemistry based illnesses. Maybe society since Francis Bacon has a treatable, brainless-based illness. Or maybe since Adam. Where was I? Oh yeah, so, I remember hearing Thich Nhat Hanh’s voice on the Ethan Hawke Hamlet (not the best version, but some good moments, and hey, it’s Hamlet). I remember being transfixed by the voice. It’s played during the to be or not to be speech, and Thich Nhat Hanh added, “we also have ‘interbe,’ we are interconnected. We have mother father, brother, sister, but also earth, air, water, forests” or something like that. On a hunch I went to podcasts on itunes and looked up Thich Nhat Hanh, only to find yes, it is his voice, and yes, it is still transfixing, and he has wonderful truths to remind us about. His message is fairly simple, yet profound: a police chief from Wisconsin and an African American Baptist Minister from Ohio (?) were giving stories about how his teachings helped them. Essentially, he teaches mindfulness, bringing body and mind together through breathing and walking meditation. He teaches mindfulness workshops, speaking to all manner of groups. He’ll be at UCLA coming up for a Psychotherapy and Mindfulness Seminar, which I would love to afford. I also just went to Vroman’s, where there is always some display with Zen books and some purchasable doo-dads, like a portable zen garden or something. Coming back down the stairs from a bathroom break while studying, I saw a display on the very thing I spent a half hour researching online yesterday: A book with a CD and DVD for a mere $25, which I was very tempted to buy. Mind you, I have several books on meditation, but none by Thich Nhat Hanh, and none on walking meditation. This is something of a separate issue and one for which my wife recently gave me a half hour lecture over Shabu Shabu, I need to put into practice what I know. This is not new information, but somehow application comes difficult to me. I am simply full of excuses and perhaps lazier than most. Anyway, After spending $500 on fillings (the same day I watched Sicko, ironically), $140 on the GRE General and $130 on the GRE subject test, not to mention the $3.50 on a mocha, I chose not to purchase the item. Which brings us back to Graham Ward, if you follow me. Although I have decided to be more proactive in my relationship with the outside world. At no time did I feel more disconnected from society as grad school and college. Maybe it’s the transience of place in the academic experience, maybe my emotional life was always rooted in a different place, but now I listen to local radio, pay taxes, root for the local team. Pay some attention to local and national politics. I’m a citizen. As a citizen, I’m looking up poetry readings to go to for some mutual inspiration. There’s a local group that gets together for mindful meditation every Wednesday evening, cleverly called PasaDharma group. Now, in times past, these things seemed so esoteric, new age, sort of ‘out there’ as my parents might say. But in listening to Thich Nhat Hanh, in listening to Roshi Wendy Nakao (head abbot of the Los Angeles Zen Center), they have the ring of truth, they strike that balance between joyful expression and honesty, and humility, something I’m missing in my Christian communities these days. I also know of those who claim their turn toward zen helped them become more committed to their Christian walk. Of course, I also know those who left everything to move into the zen center, and drop acid to find all the lost heroes from past lives that still inhabit their soul. Sooo, we could go either way, it looks like.
Thursday, June 28, 2007
Marriage, Moving, and Interior Design
Soooo, moving into a new place in Pasadena, shaping and forming it. Difficult configuring a new life, the uncertainty of it, the desire to shape it as a shared experience when your significant other is having a great amount of anxiety surrounding, or perhaps triggered by, this very process. As a foray into interior design (not my forte), I've been scouring the internet for something offbeat. Something 50's, black and white or sepia toned, a cafe picture, someone smoking a cigarette maybe. New York? Paris? San Francisco? I don't really care. I have a vague picture in my mind of the thing, but cannot conjure it, no matter how many artprint.com websites I google. I checked in town, but my knowledge of LA art print shops is limited. Any ideas? I checked out Wacko, Book Soup for some reason, 3rd street promenade. The thing is, by now, you come across the same thing over and over and everything looks generic. Any ideas? I'm off to Amoeba Music tomorrow. Maybe I'll find something I'm looking for, except with Sinatra or Dylan or James Dean on it instead. I would have preferred an anonymous subject, but beggers can't be choosers. Maybe Vroman's has something cool. Or maybe not.
Summer is here and a wedding looming next week. We did go out to Malibu yesterday to get sunburnt and sit in traffic for two hours on the way home. Fiancee in panic mode and I at least partially to blame, inasmuch as I had nothing to do with her family structure and past pain. On the other hand, I am not the most proactive person when it comes to practical things. Me taking the reigns in certain areas would no doubt alleviate some of the strain, buuuut I'm me, so how do you work this, what's it called? Screwdriver? I just want to listen to some music, maybe have some wine, unwind, plan some things for the wedding, play some basketball, go to a movie, read a book, go to sleep, start over. I think it's customary to spend time with friends during such a time, which is actually difficult in LA, even though I have some friends who live quite close, it's difficult to find common time. Speaking of which, I received a call from a very old friend, who I haven't seen in 9 years. He's getting married in a month and a half. Somehow I think his transition to marriage is running a little more smoothly than my own. But then, each relationship has its own identity I suppose. I'm actually just pleasantly excited to see old friends and family, some of whom have never met. I just hope my fiancee makes it down the aisle without passing out. Seriously, we're at that point. She assures me it's not me, it's marriage itself. Whew. That's a relief. Cos for a second there, I thought you were going to bail because it was me, but if you just bail cos it's marriage, I'm fine. Seriously folks, I'll be here all week. By myself, maybe, but I'll definitely be here. I signed a six month lease, after all. Aaaanyhoo, tomorrow happy days are here again, cos it's guys night at my place, or at least, technically guys night, seeing as we'll spend the night trying not to spill wine on the new carpet. How the mighty have fallen. Maybe I should keep the Oxi Clean handy. Then Mom flies down from Portland for damage control and pre-wedding help. Thanks Mom! (that's her on the left) Lessee, Monday, Michi flies over from DC. The plan was to hit either Chateau Marmont or Beverly Hills Hotel's Polo Lounge for afternoon drinks. We'll see about that. Then we'll do the Sideways thing. Going up to Buellton, staying at the Windmill Inn eating at the Hitching Post, which I liked, but Karla didn't and Michi definitely will. We'll take in some of the wine in the Central Coast, Santa Barbara County stuff, hopefully stay sober so we can drive back in time for dinner with Mom and Karla.
Then people will start trickling in at both LAX and Ontario airports and we'll make our way to the Mission Inn to get ready for the wedding. C u there. Cheers!
Summer is here and a wedding looming next week. We did go out to Malibu yesterday to get sunburnt and sit in traffic for two hours on the way home. Fiancee in panic mode and I at least partially to blame, inasmuch as I had nothing to do with her family structure and past pain. On the other hand, I am not the most proactive person when it comes to practical things. Me taking the reigns in certain areas would no doubt alleviate some of the strain, buuuut I'm me, so how do you work this, what's it called? Screwdriver? I just want to listen to some music, maybe have some wine, unwind, plan some things for the wedding, play some basketball, go to a movie, read a book, go to sleep, start over. I think it's customary to spend time with friends during such a time, which is actually difficult in LA, even though I have some friends who live quite close, it's difficult to find common time. Speaking of which, I received a call from a very old friend, who I haven't seen in 9 years. He's getting married in a month and a half. Somehow I think his transition to marriage is running a little more smoothly than my own. But then, each relationship has its own identity I suppose. I'm actually just pleasantly excited to see old friends and family, some of whom have never met. I just hope my fiancee makes it down the aisle without passing out. Seriously, we're at that point. She assures me it's not me, it's marriage itself. Whew. That's a relief. Cos for a second there, I thought you were going to bail because it was me, but if you just bail cos it's marriage, I'm fine. Seriously folks, I'll be here all week. By myself, maybe, but I'll definitely be here. I signed a six month lease, after all. Aaaanyhoo, tomorrow happy days are here again, cos it's guys night at my place, or at least, technically guys night, seeing as we'll spend the night trying not to spill wine on the new carpet. How the mighty have fallen. Maybe I should keep the Oxi Clean handy. Then Mom flies down from Portland for damage control and pre-wedding help. Thanks Mom! (that's her on the left) Lessee, Monday, Michi flies over from DC. The plan was to hit either Chateau Marmont or Beverly Hills Hotel's Polo Lounge for afternoon drinks. We'll see about that. Then we'll do the Sideways thing. Going up to Buellton, staying at the Windmill Inn eating at the Hitching Post, which I liked, but Karla didn't and Michi definitely will. We'll take in some of the wine in the Central Coast, Santa Barbara County stuff, hopefully stay sober so we can drive back in time for dinner with Mom and Karla.
Then people will start trickling in at both LAX and Ontario airports and we'll make our way to the Mission Inn to get ready for the wedding. C u there. Cheers!
Wednesday, June 20, 2007
Seeing our shadows... or dehumanizing others
Ooo. Highfalutin' title. I like it. Thinking lately about the two opposed kings which encamp them still, in man as well as herbs, grace and rude will. Here, Shakespeare is talking about that duality which exists in nature, brought about by, well, what? The erotic? The daimonic? The force that through the green fuse drives the flower? It's that force that drives human passion. When we integrate it into ourselves, into our society, it becomes a constructive force, love, creativity, etc. When we fail to integrate it, it becomes a destructive force, violence, self-mutilation, suicide. Both are connected with passion. It strikes me, just as it has other, smarter people, whose ideas I am ripping off, that when we are presented with the destructive manifestation of this energy, we in our Western, Judeo-Christian-cum-Hellenistic dualism, call it sin and castigate those, identifying them as evil, etc. "How could someone do that?" "Why do they hate us?" "Axis of evil," etc. It's this dualism that is the problem. We project our own inner demons onto whoever the baddie du jour is. Nazis, Commies, Al Qaeda, Iraqis, whoever. These would be the enemies of the conservative. Or, if you like, liberals project their inner demons onto fundamentalists, conservatives, Bible-thumpers. In both cases, labels are dehumanizing. You and I do it. Whoever you say "God, I hate those type of people," about. This constitutes a kind of spiritual violence, a psychological violence. Yes, this even applies to the socially awkward gaming nerds who occupied by room, until recently, at every break and lunch.
It is also this force that drives us toward learning, a thirst for knowledge, understanding. Isn't this, at its heart, a desire for communion of some kind? Of connection? To truth? To something beyond ourselves? Although, I suppose it can also be done for purposes of status, to measure up to some standard, internal or external, real or imagined. Rollo May brings up Oedipus in connection with this. He solved the riddle of the Sphinx (he had knowledge of man), he ruled the city in relative happiness and harmony, until the outbreak, (he had power). But he lacks self-knowledge. He does not know who he is. One reading of the story is that his relentless pursuit of the truth, even though it causes his downfall, is heroic. He strives toward self-knowledge, even though it has a high cost. The cost of knowledge today? The cost of tapping into that creative energy? It is true that the learned of each era have to wrestle with the demons of their era more profoundly than the simple. Is this a worthwhile struggle? Increased knowledge brings an increased sense of responsibility, but not always increased power to affect change (debatable). Increased knowledge brings increased fear and anxiety. Still chewing on how this connects to the driving force of Eros. I had this experience last night, tired from the day, changing channels, nothing but American trash on the television, none of it engaging interest, passion. None of it would make me anything but dumber for having watched it. Soooo, I pop in a DVD about the Romantic poets, something educational after a mind-numbing day, something stimulating. Then Karla comes home, who, I know would be bored to tears by it, so I turn it off. In her defence, the footage they've chosen to roll when some of the poetry is read is absolutely ludicrous. Romantic poetry doesn't translate well to the screen apparently. So there I am, leafing through Kubla Kahn , trying to remember old scribbled notes from college, and then I flip channels again, Karla comes home, and it's either House MD, which used to seem like a good show, but the formula is wearing thin, or America Has Talent, which is what Karla prefers, featuring the talents of David Hasselhof as cheesy at it gets, and Jerry Springer as the color commentary. How many more signals can there be for "dumbed down, consumable trash." I'm tempted to go off on a rant about how trashy insta-entertainment is incompatible with a life of the mind, yadda yadda, but then maybe it was my state of mind at the time. I was in high culture mode, and could brook no indignities, and she had just come from a youth meeting of some kind or other and wanted something brainless. Although I don't anticipate ever being in the mood for Hasselhof and Springer and the spectacle of the caricatures of actual people that perform on the show, and I do see this being something of a recurring problem, maybe I shouldn't make thaaat big a deal about it. over and out good buddy.
It is also this force that drives us toward learning, a thirst for knowledge, understanding. Isn't this, at its heart, a desire for communion of some kind? Of connection? To truth? To something beyond ourselves? Although, I suppose it can also be done for purposes of status, to measure up to some standard, internal or external, real or imagined. Rollo May brings up Oedipus in connection with this. He solved the riddle of the Sphinx (he had knowledge of man), he ruled the city in relative happiness and harmony, until the outbreak, (he had power). But he lacks self-knowledge. He does not know who he is. One reading of the story is that his relentless pursuit of the truth, even though it causes his downfall, is heroic. He strives toward self-knowledge, even though it has a high cost. The cost of knowledge today? The cost of tapping into that creative energy? It is true that the learned of each era have to wrestle with the demons of their era more profoundly than the simple. Is this a worthwhile struggle? Increased knowledge brings an increased sense of responsibility, but not always increased power to affect change (debatable). Increased knowledge brings increased fear and anxiety. Still chewing on how this connects to the driving force of Eros. I had this experience last night, tired from the day, changing channels, nothing but American trash on the television, none of it engaging interest, passion. None of it would make me anything but dumber for having watched it. Soooo, I pop in a DVD about the Romantic poets, something educational after a mind-numbing day, something stimulating. Then Karla comes home, who, I know would be bored to tears by it, so I turn it off. In her defence, the footage they've chosen to roll when some of the poetry is read is absolutely ludicrous. Romantic poetry doesn't translate well to the screen apparently. So there I am, leafing through Kubla Kahn , trying to remember old scribbled notes from college, and then I flip channels again, Karla comes home, and it's either House MD, which used to seem like a good show, but the formula is wearing thin, or America Has Talent, which is what Karla prefers, featuring the talents of David Hasselhof as cheesy at it gets, and Jerry Springer as the color commentary. How many more signals can there be for "dumbed down, consumable trash." I'm tempted to go off on a rant about how trashy insta-entertainment is incompatible with a life of the mind, yadda yadda, but then maybe it was my state of mind at the time. I was in high culture mode, and could brook no indignities, and she had just come from a youth meeting of some kind or other and wanted something brainless. Although I don't anticipate ever being in the mood for Hasselhof and Springer and the spectacle of the caricatures of actual people that perform on the show, and I do see this being something of a recurring problem, maybe I shouldn't make thaaat big a deal about it. over and out good buddy.
Art Exhibits
Three cool art projects. One, the insanely beautiful and traveling exhibit (was in Santa Monica last year, somewhere in Japan at the moment), exploring the relationship of man and the animal kingdom, deeply beautiful and haunting Ashes and Snow. Another one, I don't mind admitting, I filched off of Barry Taylor's blog (Never Mind the Bricolage), explores art in nature, the underwater scultpure exhibit. Yet a third exhibit is at LA's sort of hipster M+B Gallery. The exhibit is called Another Night Upon Us. It's shot through with some Beat type themes, isolation, community, consciousness, drugs, San Francisco, rebellion, counterculture. That stuff. Originally, this was a set of poems sent by Marcos Johnson to actor Joaquin Phoenix, who decided to ask a photographer friend to translate the poems into visual art. The exhibit pulls no punches and this definitely explores the shadow side, but never, I think, in an exploitative way. Not exactly conservative, but hey, neither am I. Check out the exhibit here. Check out the LA Times write up here.
Monday, June 18, 2007
Vocation
Sooooo, at least 8 people over the past 6 months have uttered the following phrase to me: "I can totally see you teaching college." Perhaps this comes from my frustrations teaching at the High School level, but this is an intriguing prospect. Now, it's true that I love ideas and conversation, but it's also true that I'm a crappy, sloppy, ill prepared, unorganized High School teacher. I mean, I'm improving, prospective future employers, I'm definitely improving. Another problem is my memory. I just picked up a book I began reading last month, but was interrupted through moving, wedding plans, lesson plans, and forgetfulness. I remembered enjoying the book and respecting the author's synthesis of disparate information, from Hegel to Picasso to Freud etc. aaaand it's actually practically worthwhile (the book is Love and Will by Rollo May), buuut I had forgotten any of the book's contents, and had to reread half of it. I had forgotten the book's CENTRAL THESIS. Disconcerting. Then last night I'm watching a program on the Augustan Poets (that's late 1600's I think)...Dryden, Pope, those guys. And one of the profs interviewed for the piece reminded me why I loved English classes in college, that confluence of history, philosophy and the beauty of language. But he also reminded me I don't know much, or at least I lack the framework, and that deep attentiveness that good profs have (on the heroic couplet, he says, "it appears to resolve something, you gather experience and concentrate a comment on it in this seemingly resolved couplet. there's a real sense of structure and order to it, a strength and resolve" If asked about the heroic couplet two days ago, I might have said "I think it, like, rhymes.") Of course, he's much older than I am and finished his PhD, but he spoke no differently than my old English profs, and if I get into that line of work, I have a ways to go. I actually had to pause the DVD and ponder, before moving on, the following point. Let me paraphrase: "It would be a mistake to characterize the Augustan Age as an age of reason. In 1690, John Locke publishes his 'Treatise on Human Reason' [or something]. And in that, he posits that all mental processes, however complex they might be, derive from sense impression, from experience. So it's up to individual to order them, to marshal them. So there's a real sense in which ("there's a sense in which" is every English prof's favorite phrase), out there, things are not so ordered, and there's a real need for the creation of order, which influences greatly the way the 18th century sees itself." Now, I may have read some John Locke, I really don't remember, and I certainly don't remember any of his main ideas, let alone their hhistorical context and socio-literary impact. I do remember something of the Romantic Poets' reaction to Empiricism, and their clash against stratified, logical-linear, scientific method, positivistic, reductionistic worldview, which is not my favorite either, although in my later and less vulnerable years, I am able to see the value of structure and order, even if it is not my natural ally. And reading May today reminds me I am lacking an overall framework. I may have bits and pieces of information rattling around upstairs, on poetry, on theology, on psychology, a teensy bit on philosophy (the most difficult for me to remember, because I can't form a mental image of how, exactly, Heidegger differs from, say Schopenhauer, and how he, in turn, differs from Hegel. Somehow, these bits of information haven't congealed. All that to say, should someone with a mind like a steel sieve be pursuing a Professorship in English? Hmmm.
Friday, June 15, 2007
Only Trouble is Interesting
Sitting in Zeli in Pasadena, sipping a mocha reading a book on Zen. Ah, just like the good old days. The TV overhead has the news on, only with captions and the sound off. It's Paris again, in or out of jail or sick or born again or talking to Paula Zahn or whoever about her week long ordeal. Real things are happening in the world, real things that need to be addressed, but we've moved from wondering who Anna Nicole's baby-daddy is to tracking a do-nothing blonde's (with naught but a good PR firm to her name) legal woes. We invest meaning into these things. I'm wondering about troubled people in therapy (myself on occasion), I'm worried about the difficulty of relationships nowadays, the myriad mini-dramas that unfold, the longing for a different life, the fear of being boxed in, the fear of committing to something that might be limiting. The soap opera of it all, and then I remember a maxim from writing seminars: Only Trouble is Interesting. Hmmm. If this is the guiding principle in story, and we pump our heads full of story through television and film all our lives, how would this affect our basic worldview? Trouble = Drama = A Fulfilled Life? Can we take delight in mere contentment? I have heard it said recently by friends of mine that "they don't feel interesting anymore" or they've "lost touch with who they are." Caught in constant study or a daily routine of work that is somehow compartmentalized from their essential identity, they feel disconnected. Maybe this is also connected with our mobile society. Disconnected from people and places, the network of relationships that comprise our identity beyond our minds and bodies, we suffer recurring identity crises. One way of avoiding this is actually losing oneself in the workaday routine or study. But the respite is temporary. The problem is self-knowledge, self-discovery, an essentially spiritual problem, it seems. Not that study and work or anything for that mattter is divorced from the spiritual, but maybe we divorce them from the spriritual through lack of attentiveness. I wanted to say something pithy like "you can't solve a spiritual problem through intellectual pursuit alone," but maybe that's a little too Wayne Dyer. The experiences and definitions are a lot more fluid than that. The overwhelming questions remain: how do we cultivate a sense of spiritual depth and a sense of meaning? One difficulty I'm finding is that the traditional answers become stale very quickly. On an intellectual level, I would say community is of utmost importance. On the ground level, however, I find myself quickly cynical about any community I've been a part of. Not that they have nothing to offer, and not that I have nothing to offer them, but the conversations begin to repeat themselves, people return each week with the same problems. We sound like one note instruments. Not only the topics, but who will say what when soon becomes predictable, seemingly trite and obvious. Soon, things plateau out, the relationships seem shallow, the community itself strained and self-perpetuating, the same language, the same rhetoric which never lives up to reality. On the other hand, I'm also tired of being cynical and being thus divorced from community. A vicious cycle. A rambling blog. A tummy craving coffee...I'd wish you a good day, but then, only trouble is interesting...
Tuesday, June 5, 2007
Link of the month...
...because I'm too lazy to put a link of the day, or even of the week, for that matter.
So, da homey BT has a great little rant about the confluence of soft pop culture and Christianity. A nice quote from Graham Ward thrown in for good measure. Enjoy.
So, da homey BT has a great little rant about the confluence of soft pop culture and Christianity. A nice quote from Graham Ward thrown in for good measure. Enjoy.
Monday, May 28, 2007
On Boundaries
I've been talking to a friend about the nature of boundaries. Maybe this is a late 20's, early adulthood question for our times that wasn't so much one in previous generations. Or maybe it was, who knows. We were discussing whether or not there's a relationship between a kind of hedonism and depression. Most of us need boundaries of some kind to be able to focus and be productive. Karla has a ton of boundaries, for example, and is able to be hugely productive, being a full-time graduate student, a full-time youth minister, going on tour guiding trips out East, getting ready for marriage. This would bury me, because I don't have the same capacity to set boundaries and be focused. If I write a paper for example, I'll write a little, have a thought, which will lead to another, less relevant thought, look up some poem, write a few lines of my own, stare at the wall contemplating some new thought. Go to the kitchen to refill my hot chocolate. Tell myself to focus, then return to the computer to write another page. Karla, however, can sit and crank out 6 pages straight, because she can mentally focus and block out other distractions. Her thinking is more logical-linear, mine is more contextual-associative. She's good with numbers, I'm good with languages. I thought about my students' low expectations, low performance vs. my Honors students, or students from richer neighborhoods who are pressured and driven to succeed and get into the best colleges. My low performing kids, whether through cultural expectations, genetics, parenting, whatever, have little ability to set boundaries. I have to constantly reinforce boundary. "It's not time to talk, give me that ipod, turn down your music, hand over that PSP, that camera, time to begin, be on time, write down your HW somewhere where you'll find it later." I feel like a drill sergeant some days. But these kids need some sense of boundary to be productive at all. We as people need some sense of boundary to find fulfillment, as well. I'm reading "Love and Will" by Rollo May, in which he addresses the shift in thinking about sexuality in our century to much of our anxiety and depression. This may seem like a fairly conservative conclusion to draw, but for me, at least, it rings true. Without some sort of boundary on desire, it spills in every which direction, and instant gratification leads to a kind of hollowness around it. The friend of mine with whom I've been discussing the issue is a burning man refugee of sorts. During his marriage he felt the world around him was passing him by. People are having all sorts of naughty fun and he wasn't at the party, so to speak. This is a very seductive idea for a lot of workaday people I think. You come home tired with all these worries and pressures. You fill up your gas tank so you can go to work the next day and suddenly you see three young, beautiful women in sequined mini-skirts headed for Shangri-La, it seems, filling up their gas tank for a night of the town. Or, in my friend's case, many people he knew were part of the Burning Man community with more open attitudes toward drugs and sexuality than existed in his marriage and primary community. He romanticized the idea of being in a band, touring, going to bacchanalian Burning Man revelries, being open to new experiences, etc. He fantasized about a world with fewer boundaries. Although it's more complicated than that, these ideas had much to do with the marriage suffering and the subsequent divorce. Now, a year later, he's able to see value in those boundaries he resented. This rings true in other areas as well. Take the Beats for instance, whose works appealed to my inner teenager, when I was a teenager...well, in my early twenties, too. Even now, there's a pang of longing attached to their work. The conventional line is that the Beats thumbed their noses at the mindless conformity of the late 40's and early 50's, through laissez faire lifestyles, pursuit of authentic connection, accompanied by physical, sexual, psychological indulgence of all kinds that was integral in shaping the countercultural 60s. They obliterated boundaries. Let's track for a moment the trajectory of some of the Beats, shall we? Kerouac died an alcoholic living with his mother in his forties. Neal, well, I'm sure someone knows, but by and large he seems to have lost all his friends and lovers. Burroughs shot his wife in the head by accident, spent many years in Mexico and Morrocco molesting children and is hailed as some sort of genius for Naked Lunch, makes an appearance in Drugstore Cowboy. Ginsberg probably made out the best of all of them. I have a fond place in my heart for On The Road, its sense of frenetic energy, its prose, its embrace of Americana, the pursuit of metaphysical freedom, but I'm not sure those gone cats drew the right conclusions about what constitutes a life well lived.
More accessible
I was going through some of the other blogs I've linked to, admiring some of the writing and the experiences shared. I had an interesting experience coming across an album review by Barry Taylor, postmodern prophet whatever, pseudo-pastor of a pseudo-church called New Ground in West LA, very intelligent, philosophical mind, well connected in "the biz," fashion connoisseur, art connoisseur, teaches at both Fuller Seminary and the Art Institute. Knows his Lacan from his Derrida, I can tell you that. Anyway, he taught a Theology and Popular Music class at Fuller in my first year, which was very good (Simon Frith, anyone?). During the course of the class, it became very clear we have quite divergent tastes in music, or so I thought. I could definitely go without Morrissey, or even Toots and the Maytalls (sp?) for that matter. On his blog is a review of perhaps one of my favorite new musicians of the past few years, Ray LaMontagne. I loved his first album Trouble. Might be in my top ten all time. His second album, however, was a little disappointing. I had pretty much one song from the album in rotation for a few months, that's it. But here was Barry's review discussing how deep and soulful the second album was, how much he liked it, etc. and I was moved to give it another listen. Now, I have to admit, I was of two minds on the issue (when am I not?). He described LaMontagne's second effort as "being perhaps less accessible" than the first album. I read that a lot in music reviews, "such and such album is perhaps less accessible than so and so's first album, but is ultimately more rewarding." What the hell does that mean? If I parse the base line and listen closely to the drum fills, magically on the 15th listen I will suddenly really like it? Hm. Oh well, maybe so. Mostly, however, when I read the words "less accessible" my mind now inserts the word "sucks" or, on occasion "boring," or perhaps even "musically uninteresting" (take that Joel Hartse, you sycophant). On the other hand, I was willing to give this album another shot due to this review of someone whose opinion I value, well, sometimes. And I suddenly realized the extent to which I am severed from community. Things like this used to happen all the time. Someone recommends something, you check it out. My primary community these days, however, is inner-city High School kids, whose imaginative horizon often extends as far as the next Taco Bell, it seems. They often accept whatever popular culture crams down their throats, whether its packaged as rebellious teen fare or not. Everyone wants to see Spider Man 3. Everyone wants to see Pirates of the Carribean. "That moobie's tight, Mister, joo should check it ou." My roommates are not exactly counter-cultural in this area either. I crave insightful, thoughtful recommendations from an actual human being, not mindless automatons nor TV and internet marketing masquerading as "reviews." Interesting to get some sort of nudge and input and a sense of expanded thinking from a blog on a toothache filled Saturday morning on three hours sleep. That's all for now.
Weekend Thoughts on Summer Escape
Sitting in the doctor’s office, I picked up a waterlogged copy of The Economist. A surprising read, actually. I’m not much one for figures and graphs and, well, economics, but there was such a variety of topics covered on a global scale and with real insight. Nice for a change. Makes you realize how much a lot of our other rags are becoming dumbed-down to cater to our ADHD-riddled populace. Made me want to get a subscription, y’know, soon as the finances get stable. Karla’s housesitting, so I’m sitting at a desk in La Canada and last night we watched – gasp – cable television. Watched the Jazz thankfully pummel the Spurs. One of the first games I’ve caught all year. Deron Williams looked like he’ll be around for a while. Ditto Carlos Boozer. They pretty much fulfill the old Stockalone roles on the team. You can see them running the same plays, setting the same screen and roll sets, etc. Don’t think they’ll win the series, fun to root for though. Watched Chariots of Fire for the first time (Best Picture, 1981) which started off veeerrrrry sloooowwwly, but picked up later on. Interesting meditation of what drives people.
The Travel Channel this morning is making me want to go back to Europe, or at the very least makes me miss the old days. There’s a sense of adventure and randomness associated with those memories. Going out with friends, no telling who you might meet or where you might end up that night, or with whom. Don’t know if I could keep up that lifestyle indefinitely, but nice memories on a sun soaked Sunday in La Canada. The cheesy all-American couple’s trips through Venice, the bubbly woman’s reports from Copenhagen and Geneva so much more enticing than Not Your Average Travel Guy’s fairly average travels through Philadelphia. Travel is transformative, but it’s not just visiting the locales that I miss, though, I kind of miss that part of my identity. The worldview, the self-understanding, that is in many ways very different to implicit American values. In fact, it’s very un-Americanness is part of the allure. America’s youth-oriented, Disneyfied culture seen as a kind of foil. Shallowness, materialism, individualism, cutesy-ness. We’re a culture of quaint and cute. But there are upsides to American culture, the embrace of different kinds of people, the positive attitude. But I do miss the value of tranquility and community from back home. The anxiety being, how much will that forever be a thing of the past given marriage and settling down? Will my children ever know that part of who I am, or just become conformist American automatons? All valid worries, but at some point, you have to release those fears and let things come as they do. On the way out of the doctor’s office I saw this true Californian, 40-ish gent in a shiny new black BMW, hair done like he was a member of Fall Out Boy or something, tattoos, Ray Bans, the works. I guess that’s the cake-and-eat-it-too promise of California. Other places you might be expected to grow up, assume traditional lifestyle roles to be respectable, to earn an income, to make your parents proud, whatever. Here, you can be Peter Pan and earn a six figure income. That’s sort of the charm of the entertainment industry, I suppose. It’s interesting to listen to prophets of postmodernism waxing philosophical about how, these days, such boundaries no longer exist, we live in an age of different identity structures, conceptions of the self, definitions of success, etc. etc. and then to go visit family in Oregon or New Jersey or wherever and it’s clear that you can’t simply say across the board that we live in some newfangled postmodern age where everything has shifted, the old ways are irrelevant, etc. Things aren’t that easy. Things commingle and collide.
The Travel Channel this morning is making me want to go back to Europe, or at the very least makes me miss the old days. There’s a sense of adventure and randomness associated with those memories. Going out with friends, no telling who you might meet or where you might end up that night, or with whom. Don’t know if I could keep up that lifestyle indefinitely, but nice memories on a sun soaked Sunday in La Canada. The cheesy all-American couple’s trips through Venice, the bubbly woman’s reports from Copenhagen and Geneva so much more enticing than Not Your Average Travel Guy’s fairly average travels through Philadelphia. Travel is transformative, but it’s not just visiting the locales that I miss, though, I kind of miss that part of my identity. The worldview, the self-understanding, that is in many ways very different to implicit American values. In fact, it’s very un-Americanness is part of the allure. America’s youth-oriented, Disneyfied culture seen as a kind of foil. Shallowness, materialism, individualism, cutesy-ness. We’re a culture of quaint and cute. But there are upsides to American culture, the embrace of different kinds of people, the positive attitude. But I do miss the value of tranquility and community from back home. The anxiety being, how much will that forever be a thing of the past given marriage and settling down? Will my children ever know that part of who I am, or just become conformist American automatons? All valid worries, but at some point, you have to release those fears and let things come as they do. On the way out of the doctor’s office I saw this true Californian, 40-ish gent in a shiny new black BMW, hair done like he was a member of Fall Out Boy or something, tattoos, Ray Bans, the works. I guess that’s the cake-and-eat-it-too promise of California. Other places you might be expected to grow up, assume traditional lifestyle roles to be respectable, to earn an income, to make your parents proud, whatever. Here, you can be Peter Pan and earn a six figure income. That’s sort of the charm of the entertainment industry, I suppose. It’s interesting to listen to prophets of postmodernism waxing philosophical about how, these days, such boundaries no longer exist, we live in an age of different identity structures, conceptions of the self, definitions of success, etc. etc. and then to go visit family in Oregon or New Jersey or wherever and it’s clear that you can’t simply say across the board that we live in some newfangled postmodern age where everything has shifted, the old ways are irrelevant, etc. Things aren’t that easy. Things commingle and collide.
The Real Press Junket
The Real Press Junket:
The Red Eyes. The band’s very name conjures up images of late nights, long flights, or perhaps even illicit substances. It is also, incidentally, the name of a band. Local music aficionado Ramon Hernandez sums up the band’s impact: “Did you say Red Ice?” Having departed from the bands Dead West and Dean is Dead in mid 2005, guitarist Colin Johnson, vocalist Marc Shaw, and multi-instrumentalist Jason Farman pooled their collective futility into a new project: The Red Eyes. “I don’t know what we were thinking at the time,” says Farman, “maybe we just had too much time on our hands.” In any event, the members soon hired snobbish drummer Jaime Pitts with his unfortunate surname and slightly better than mediocre bassist but all around good guy Eric “Roshi” Mulligan and began reworking their mid-tempo, folk-rock sound into a more trendy Brit Pop, given the recent actual success of bands such as The Killers, Bloc Party, Kasabian, and others. No matter the songwriting quality, the band always had an ace up their sleeve: “If you could make the vocals sound more like Dave Gahan, I think it would really work for this song,” became a kind of battle cry, a mantra around which the band rallied. With the production prowess and marketing ideas of chronic stoner Billy Baker, the band’s first album “Up All Night” was underway. With at least two memorable tracks and some filler, this album hit the market with aplomb. After their self-financed CD release party in the same rehearsal studio where the successful band Keane had actually just practiced, the band had the momentum to hit the LA club circuit, playing at least nine shows in a year and a half. Due to this blistering pace and blitzkrieg marketing, the instant classic “Up All Night” flew off the racks at the breakneck rate of just under three units per show. After months of knocking on the door, the band finally played the world renowned Spaceland venue in the Silverlake district of Los Angeles. After the previous band’s fans trickled out during the show, die hard fan Rob Strong remained, leaning against a post, soaking it all in. “Oh, my God, they were just so on tonight. Great energy. A really voluptuous sound. Did you get that down? I rarely use that word in a sentence. It just sort of rolls off the tongue, doesn’t it? Vol-up-tu-ous. That’s awesome.” With the extra money they made from selling chocolate Easter bunnies door to door, the band reentered the studio after months of shows. Says Johnson, “We had a few new ideas, and the Easter bunny thing went really well, and we figured, hey, we’re in a band, we know this producer guy, why not record some more songs?” The boys did just that. Boasting at least one memorable track, the aptly named “Let it Die,” look for their new EP flying out of trunks everywhere from Pasadena to South Pasadena in Summer 2007.
The Red Eyes. The band’s very name conjures up images of late nights, long flights, or perhaps even illicit substances. It is also, incidentally, the name of a band. Local music aficionado Ramon Hernandez sums up the band’s impact: “Did you say Red Ice?” Having departed from the bands Dead West and Dean is Dead in mid 2005, guitarist Colin Johnson, vocalist Marc Shaw, and multi-instrumentalist Jason Farman pooled their collective futility into a new project: The Red Eyes. “I don’t know what we were thinking at the time,” says Farman, “maybe we just had too much time on our hands.” In any event, the members soon hired snobbish drummer Jaime Pitts with his unfortunate surname and slightly better than mediocre bassist but all around good guy Eric “Roshi” Mulligan and began reworking their mid-tempo, folk-rock sound into a more trendy Brit Pop, given the recent actual success of bands such as The Killers, Bloc Party, Kasabian, and others. No matter the songwriting quality, the band always had an ace up their sleeve: “If you could make the vocals sound more like Dave Gahan, I think it would really work for this song,” became a kind of battle cry, a mantra around which the band rallied. With the production prowess and marketing ideas of chronic stoner Billy Baker, the band’s first album “Up All Night” was underway. With at least two memorable tracks and some filler, this album hit the market with aplomb. After their self-financed CD release party in the same rehearsal studio where the successful band Keane had actually just practiced, the band had the momentum to hit the LA club circuit, playing at least nine shows in a year and a half. Due to this blistering pace and blitzkrieg marketing, the instant classic “Up All Night” flew off the racks at the breakneck rate of just under three units per show. After months of knocking on the door, the band finally played the world renowned Spaceland venue in the Silverlake district of Los Angeles. After the previous band’s fans trickled out during the show, die hard fan Rob Strong remained, leaning against a post, soaking it all in. “Oh, my God, they were just so on tonight. Great energy. A really voluptuous sound. Did you get that down? I rarely use that word in a sentence. It just sort of rolls off the tongue, doesn’t it? Vol-up-tu-ous. That’s awesome.” With the extra money they made from selling chocolate Easter bunnies door to door, the band reentered the studio after months of shows. Says Johnson, “We had a few new ideas, and the Easter bunny thing went really well, and we figured, hey, we’re in a band, we know this producer guy, why not record some more songs?” The boys did just that. Boasting at least one memorable track, the aptly named “Let it Die,” look for their new EP flying out of trunks everywhere from Pasadena to South Pasadena in Summer 2007.
Saturday, May 26, 2007
Decisions...and a novel
Sooo, I watched the season Finale of Lost on Wednesday. Not much to say there. Not much revealed. The story has been more bogged down this season than helped by the flashback, or, in this case, flash forward sequences. On Thursday, school sucked. Although Karla and I did find a cool coffee shop in Monrovia to study at that evening. On Friday, besides staying up til 5 am with a throbbing, I-want-to-rip-my-face-off toothache, I'll confess, I did much research on the viability of an MA in Lit. vs and MFA in creative writing. All things being equal, that is, funding, possibility of a teaching post, or at least the possibility of following up with doctoral work, I'd do the MFA, no question. These programs are usually a mix of lit. study and workshops anyway. I'd be there in a heartbeat. Then there's the problem of finding a program that you like. Then there's the slightly larger problem of finding a program that will accept you. Right now there's also the slight problem of what work to submit. I've been working on a novel lately, about which I am by turns excited, frustrated, energetic, and apathetic. I've submitted some poems to Lit. Journals, but no word yet, so I won't exactly have a shining CV. On the other hand, I grew up in Germany, went to college in Seattle, went to Seminary to study Theology and Art, I worked with Special Ed. kids, and I now teach at a Title I High School in downtown LA and coaching Varsity basketball (poorly). This should count for something, right? Back to the novel, though. I've been wanting to write one for years. Not sure if I'm a mature enough writer yet, although, even if this one doesn't ever get published, I'll be learning a ton about the writing process, my voice, etc. Let's call it fertilizer. Although, frankly, whether in fiction, poetry, or music, I'm a little tired of producing "fertilizer." What's a lazy, disorganized pseudo-artist to do? Well, at the very least I found an authentic voice...which is nice. I've been trying to write a story for years that was somehow On The Road crossed with Dostoevsky, but, like, in Central Europe. I also produced roughly five beginnings that sounded like cheap Cormac McCarthy rip-offs. Then I hit on something. Why try and write like these people? I may love their work, but I sure as shit ain't them. A friend of mine said that, in her fiction workshop from the author of "writing from the inside out" she was asked to identify the theme of her life. She passed on the task, and here's what I came up with at the time "compartmentalization in the face of constrictions, displacement, passion, compassion, indulgence and consequence, need for depth of intimacy, simultaneous search for/avoidance of wisdom." I'm not so sure how accurate this is, reading it now, but I do know I've been discounting two very important things: my own voice - snarky, some might say, and personal experience. From uptight German school to Evangelical German church plants with an American pastor (my Dad) to an international school full of sophisticated Europeans and displaced Americans, Australians, Canadians, you name it, to traveling around Europe with basketball teams, to smoking weed in Brussels after graduation, to driving along the coast line in Australia, to living in a basement on the outskirts of Seattle, cursing God, to the small, "safe," Christian college with many shallow people and dorm meetings to determine if the girls Spring dresses were causing the boys "to stumble," to classes where my favorite professor invited us to embrace the infinite in the Blakean sense, "the miracle is right here," he'd say, "right here," to Summer debauchery back in Europe, waking up late, the days filled with friendship, laughter, cars, books, beer, basketball, billiards, and girls, to the insane asylum that is Los Angeles, and our little corner of it in particular, with Peter Pan pastors of non-churches and Tribes of the pseudo-Christian lost re-embracing faith in these postmodern times, hedonist Seminarians in acting classes, Topanga Canyon Burning Man Toys R Us kids clinging to some shadow of the 60s, two seasons: hot for nine months and grey for three. The freeway society, so transient, so busy. All this is grist for the mill. Fodder for the cannon. The raw material for the industrial, Baconian society that is my disorganized brain. I had an epiphany, a moment of clarity, a stroke of genius, call it what you will. It was so Euclidean in its simplicity: snarky+life experience = my authentic voice. Now I'm thinking less "On The Road" and more "Big Lebowski," except without the film noir touches. Derivitive, you say? Pish-posh. There's so much absurdity in this town, The Big Lebowski should have spawned a whole sub-genre. Alright, enough.
ttfn, everybody, ttfn.
ttfn, everybody, ttfn.
Thursday, May 17, 2007
Music: Four Good, Four Bad (an uncalled for rant)
Four new albums I'm excited about:
Ryan Adams - Easy tiger
Josh Rouse - Country Mouse
Wilco - Sky Blue Sky
Jesse Malin - Glitter in the Gutter
Alright, so the last one isn't so new...but I haven't gotten around to it yet.
Stumbled upon the itunes indie spotlight, which is focused on singer-songwriters this week, one of my favorite genres, but I have to make a confession, which is sacrlege or heresy or whatever among hipsters, especially neo-Christian-hipsters. Seriously, this could get me shot in Silver Lake, but it has to be said:
Connor Oberst sounds like the whiney kid in second grade who always wet his pants. Do we need more whiney, brittle white boys spilling their angst on us? I suppose I fit that bill more often than not, but still. Maybe there's some self-loathing at play here. I'll have to ask my therapist. I've had so many people who know I'm a Dylan lover recommend Bright Eyes. Really? You think so?
Second, what's the big deal about Sufjan Stevens? Maybe I haven't given him a fair shake, but I suffered through Seven Swans twice through way back when and couldn't name a single line or remember a single song title or melody from the album. I remember it being like glorified elevator music, but, y'know, sincere. Not that it was bad, just fairly typical for the genre and kind of unremarkable. Good enough for the background and...oh well, you get the point. I go out of the way here, just because these two artists specifically are recommended to me so often.
Another guy who has been granted Sainthood in these here parts is Elliott Smith, whose stuff is interesting and I like in theory, yet I always feel extremely drowsy by the third song or so whenever I put him on. Not that that's a bad thing
Lastly, I've tried to like him. I have had three or so of his songs in heavy rotation at one point or other, but another New Dylan who just doesn't pull his weight is Jackie Greene, except for "I'm so Gone." I suppose part of the draw of the modern troubadour is the subversiveness. You take a song like "Momma you've been on my mind" which leads you to expect a conventional, sentimental piece, which is subverted with a lyric like "I don't even care who you'll be waking with tomorrow/Momma, you're just on my mind." The point becomes memory, or the ways in which past experience shapes the present, not banal romanticization. Along with Dylan, Elvis Costello, Leonard Cohen, and other "singer-songwriters" do a better job at playing with convention and not falling into trite sentimentality. Greene swings and misses with "But I guess the good die young and life just isn't fair/Emily's in heaven and she's waiting for me there." Sounds like a Mitch Albom rip-off (which is funny if you scroll down, cos I actually like Mitch Albom) Even Death Cab, with "If there's no one beside you when your soul embarks/I'll follow you into the dark" if dripping with sentiment, is a powerful and memorable line. The difference, I suppose, is the use of figurative language, always a good device for a lyricist. And another thing! How did what was supposed to be a four line blog turn into the curmudgeonly ramblings of a never was? And so good night unto you all...
Ryan Adams - Easy tiger
Josh Rouse - Country Mouse
Wilco - Sky Blue Sky
Jesse Malin - Glitter in the Gutter
Alright, so the last one isn't so new...but I haven't gotten around to it yet.
Stumbled upon the itunes indie spotlight, which is focused on singer-songwriters this week, one of my favorite genres, but I have to make a confession, which is sacrlege or heresy or whatever among hipsters, especially neo-Christian-hipsters. Seriously, this could get me shot in Silver Lake, but it has to be said:
Connor Oberst sounds like the whiney kid in second grade who always wet his pants. Do we need more whiney, brittle white boys spilling their angst on us? I suppose I fit that bill more often than not, but still. Maybe there's some self-loathing at play here. I'll have to ask my therapist. I've had so many people who know I'm a Dylan lover recommend Bright Eyes. Really? You think so?
Second, what's the big deal about Sufjan Stevens? Maybe I haven't given him a fair shake, but I suffered through Seven Swans twice through way back when and couldn't name a single line or remember a single song title or melody from the album. I remember it being like glorified elevator music, but, y'know, sincere. Not that it was bad, just fairly typical for the genre and kind of unremarkable. Good enough for the background and...oh well, you get the point. I go out of the way here, just because these two artists specifically are recommended to me so often.
Another guy who has been granted Sainthood in these here parts is Elliott Smith, whose stuff is interesting and I like in theory, yet I always feel extremely drowsy by the third song or so whenever I put him on. Not that that's a bad thing
Lastly, I've tried to like him. I have had three or so of his songs in heavy rotation at one point or other, but another New Dylan who just doesn't pull his weight is Jackie Greene, except for "I'm so Gone." I suppose part of the draw of the modern troubadour is the subversiveness. You take a song like "Momma you've been on my mind" which leads you to expect a conventional, sentimental piece, which is subverted with a lyric like "I don't even care who you'll be waking with tomorrow/Momma, you're just on my mind." The point becomes memory, or the ways in which past experience shapes the present, not banal romanticization. Along with Dylan, Elvis Costello, Leonard Cohen, and other "singer-songwriters" do a better job at playing with convention and not falling into trite sentimentality. Greene swings and misses with "But I guess the good die young and life just isn't fair/Emily's in heaven and she's waiting for me there." Sounds like a Mitch Albom rip-off (which is funny if you scroll down, cos I actually like Mitch Albom) Even Death Cab, with "If there's no one beside you when your soul embarks/I'll follow you into the dark" if dripping with sentiment, is a powerful and memorable line. The difference, I suppose, is the use of figurative language, always a good device for a lyricist. And another thing! How did what was supposed to be a four line blog turn into the curmudgeonly ramblings of a never was? And so good night unto you all...
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
of gamers and grace
Sooo....for roughly a month and a half, the group I affectionately call "the dork brigade" has descended upon my room for every break and lunch to play their video games. I was of two minds on the issue. First, video games rot your brain and all that, and what the hell are these kids doing bringing their gamecubes and xboxes and playstations to school. Y'know? School. where you go to learn stuff. That place. The kids had beeen kicked out of the room next door for leaving their lunch plates, ketchup wrappers, cans, etc. on the floor after lunch. So they pleaded. Could we use your TV at lunch, Mr. Shaw? I considered, then accepted, provided they learned their lesson and clean up after themselves. After all, these are the outcasts, the orphans and widows of the school (see below), the kids others avoid, the ones with high GPAs and low self esteem, who experience cheap vicarious thrills through their onscreen avatars. And they all look like they spent the weekend staying up late at the Dungeons and Dragons table, but using frequent curse words to feel less dorky. Since then, an increasing number of students arrive in my room every day to play smash brothers death rattle 3000...or whatever. The mob is anywhere between 15 and twenty students and the noise swells to deafening levels when one student is about to defeat another or commits some other heroic act, such that the entire corpus of students begin yelling, whooping, laughing and carrying on. Now, teaching at an inner city school can be strenuous enough, even at a slightly more advanced one such as ours, with the constant resistance, inattention, seeming futility of getting 100 some odd fifteen year olds to improve their spelling, but the gamers are starting to give me a headache. When other students or faculty or staff come in to visit, it is not unlike trying to carry on a meaningful conversation at a night club, the bow-chick-a-bow booming in the background. By sixth period, I have a short fuse. Now, recently, I had a faculty meeting and had to leave the room. Unfortunately, I also left it unlocked. When I returned, there was a hole in the cheap wall right next to my door in the hall. One of the...less advanced students (who might have scored thirty a game for the JV kids if he had had the grades to be on the team, and who incidentally looks like he was dropped in bong water as a child, with perpetually squinting red eyes) decided to goad the gamers by flashing the lights off and on. In a school with no windows, this has a dramatically annoying effect. The gamers, being interrupted and hardly able to contain themselves, went berserk. Instead of hitting Mr. 4-20, and risking suspension, one of them smashed the wall instead. Now? Outcast or no outcast, have fun finding a new room. More than likely, for the students this is less of a blow than you would think, and they'll find another sap within a matter of Periods...tbc?
Friday, May 4, 2007
Interesting Exchange
I recently received an email from an old High School friend, a beautiful soul, really. She's teaching religion in the English public schools now and asked me if I was religious. We haven't spoken for years and after an MA in Theology and the Arts at Fuller, etc, she, being interested in world religions, etc. thought to pose the question. I think it's interesting at this point to reflect on the effect of studying theology on faith. Academic enterprise is colored by enlightenment thought, such that one steps back one remove from that which one studies, taking in the wide array of opinions from a variety of thinkers on a given topic. One has some critical distance, which, incidentally, I think is important to be able to think critically, to adjust, to ask questions, to be truthful, to make an accurate appraisal, to see the big picture, etc. etc. Another, less fortunate outcome of this is that studying and recofiguring different pictures of faith does not necessarily foster faith, just as reading a book on prayer or meditation will not necessarily induce prayer or meditation. This is a simple truth that most pastor's wives will tell their Seminary bound children. This is folk wisdom. INterestingly, as an English major, one spends the majority of one's time with the primary source, a given piece of literature one reads once or twice, discusses in class more in-depth, and finds some secondary sources to augment and buttress one's argument in the final paper. In theology, however, you spend more time with, shall we say, secondary sources, so that it is entirely possible to acquire an MA in Theology, or even emphasize in biblical studies and know more about Barth, Bonhoeffer, Bultmann, Calvin, Moltmann, Pannenberg, Zwingli, Luther, or whomever than direct contact with source material i.e.the Bible. Now, this may be different for different people, sometimes it takes years to relinquish emotional and psychological baggage from approaching or mis-reading a text, but still. In fact right now, I'm struck by the fact that I would much rather read Brian McLaren than crack open the New Testament. Am I innoculated against it by countless sermons? Am I a reprobate?
I'm wondering if one of the benefits of the whole postmodern brouhaha (besides the Message) will be new ways of encountering the Bible, not as moral yardstick of a life ill lived, but as an anthology of stories embodying and communicating transformative truth. I still struggle with reminding myself of this. And I don't just mean the Epistles and a few bite size portions of the Gospels, but Micah, and Amos, and Leviticus, and Lamentations, all of which I have glossed over at one time or another, but couldn't tell you all that much about, if pressed. Well, a little maybe.
Sitting in my knickers watching Harold and Maude after a long week. It's been recommended thrice in the last month or so, and I see why. (It's the black humor =)
Thought I'd post what I wrote to my old friend Charlotte in the good old UK:
I could give a sort of run down of what I believe and how that fits in with what other Christians believe, buuut, hm. Three authors I go back to on the matter are:
Brian McLaren - "Finding Faith"
Anne Lamott - "Traveling Mercies" or "Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith" aaaand
Marcus Borg - "The Heart of Christianity"
I mean there are other, more hoity-toity ones I like too, but these sort of provide a good sense of what I believe...sometimes. Basically, it would be a less conservative version of Christianity that sees the undercurrent of the Old Testament as the vision of shalom or wholeness on both personal and social levels as the whole point of God's relationship with Israel, and then Christ as a subversive truth-teller who fully embodies and points toward God, who somehow uniquely ushers in Kingdom, or Shalom, or Wholeness, which would have to consist of peace and justice (the whole emphasis in the old testament on whether or not people are taking care of the "widow and the orphan" or the social outcasts, and being punished if they don't, community, stewardship of the earth, which are all huge issues of course. I'd also say that've so individualized and privatized faith that we lose much of the original meaning, it's challenge to accepted power structures, political, economic, and spiritual. Now, other issues, virgin birth, things like that, I have a little more difficulty with. With close reading, it seems to me some of the biblical authors took on some poetic license and used symbol in their storytelling. But as an English major and one with a symbolic imagination, this is every bit as powerful as modern "journalistic" truth, if not moreso, because of its resonance. On the other hand, Hamlet tells us "there is more on heaven and earth, Horatio, than is dreamt of in your philosophy," meaning we in the West don't have enough of a sense of the Spiritual, which affects our overall health, and leaves us open to go down blind alleys in search of spiritual anything, so I wouldn't count out things only because they sound fantastic, but I also have to temper what I hear with what I've experienced.
I've been so preoccupied with practical considerations these days, job, budget, wedding, lesson planning for kids who really don't care what lesson you've planned...you're just an impediment to their socializing. Thinking about next steps these days, but not getting very far yet. I just got used to getting a paycheck, don't know if I want more school just yet. The point partially being I'm sort of failing in following even my own vision of some radical, subversive, imagination-filled, compassion-centered life. Although I do have a sense of what is toxic and destructive, and try to fight against it, or at least avoid it.
I'm wondering if one of the benefits of the whole postmodern brouhaha (besides the Message) will be new ways of encountering the Bible, not as moral yardstick of a life ill lived, but as an anthology of stories embodying and communicating transformative truth. I still struggle with reminding myself of this. And I don't just mean the Epistles and a few bite size portions of the Gospels, but Micah, and Amos, and Leviticus, and Lamentations, all of which I have glossed over at one time or another, but couldn't tell you all that much about, if pressed. Well, a little maybe.
Sitting in my knickers watching Harold and Maude after a long week. It's been recommended thrice in the last month or so, and I see why. (It's the black humor =)
Thought I'd post what I wrote to my old friend Charlotte in the good old UK:
I could give a sort of run down of what I believe and how that fits in with what other Christians believe, buuut, hm. Three authors I go back to on the matter are:
Brian McLaren - "Finding Faith"
Anne Lamott - "Traveling Mercies" or "Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith" aaaand
Marcus Borg - "The Heart of Christianity"
I mean there are other, more hoity-toity ones I like too, but these sort of provide a good sense of what I believe...sometimes. Basically, it would be a less conservative version of Christianity that sees the undercurrent of the Old Testament as the vision of shalom or wholeness on both personal and social levels as the whole point of God's relationship with Israel, and then Christ as a subversive truth-teller who fully embodies and points toward God, who somehow uniquely ushers in Kingdom, or Shalom, or Wholeness, which would have to consist of peace and justice (the whole emphasis in the old testament on whether or not people are taking care of the "widow and the orphan" or the social outcasts, and being punished if they don't, community, stewardship of the earth, which are all huge issues of course. I'd also say that've so individualized and privatized faith that we lose much of the original meaning, it's challenge to accepted power structures, political, economic, and spiritual. Now, other issues, virgin birth, things like that, I have a little more difficulty with. With close reading, it seems to me some of the biblical authors took on some poetic license and used symbol in their storytelling. But as an English major and one with a symbolic imagination, this is every bit as powerful as modern "journalistic" truth, if not moreso, because of its resonance. On the other hand, Hamlet tells us "there is more on heaven and earth, Horatio, than is dreamt of in your philosophy," meaning we in the West don't have enough of a sense of the Spiritual, which affects our overall health, and leaves us open to go down blind alleys in search of spiritual anything, so I wouldn't count out things only because they sound fantastic, but I also have to temper what I hear with what I've experienced.
I've been so preoccupied with practical considerations these days, job, budget, wedding, lesson planning for kids who really don't care what lesson you've planned...you're just an impediment to their socializing. Thinking about next steps these days, but not getting very far yet. I just got used to getting a paycheck, don't know if I want more school just yet. The point partially being I'm sort of failing in following even my own vision of some radical, subversive, imagination-filled, compassion-centered life. Although I do have a sense of what is toxic and destructive, and try to fight against it, or at least avoid it.
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