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.
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