I'm trying to compile a list of movies that are very grace-filled, or have grace as a central theme--grace used here in at least close to a Christian understanding of the word. So far I've got:
Babette's Feast
Lars and the Real Girl
O Brother, Where Art Thou?
Once
Gran Torino
In Bruges
Stranger Than Fiction
Children of Men
Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day
Tender Mercies*
The Brothers Bloom
Groundhog Day
Saving Private Ryan
Amelie*
The Sixth Sense*
Dead Man Walking*
Chocolat*
The Enchanted Cottage
Les Miserables
Forrest Gump
Signs
Brideshead Revisited*
The Lives of Others*
The Man Who Would Be King*
The Pianist*
Man on Fire*
It's a Wonderful Life
Miracle on 34th Street
Scrooge (the Alistair Sim version is best)
A Christmas Story
Casablanca
Phantom of the Opera
The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923 and 1939 versions especially)
Sense and Sensibility*
Emma*
To Kill a Mockingbird
*=Ethan hasn't seen.
Also, I can't guarantee that these are family viewing. If you ask me I will be happy to comment on the appropriateness of any particular entry.
Any suggestions?
(EDIT: I will be adding to the list as people suggest things. Keep suggesting.)
Monday, September 07, 2009
Sunday, September 06, 2009
Skewl Wurk
I just want to say that for homework this semester I do things like:
1. Write plays.
2. Read Shakespeare.
3. Read other Elizabethan and Enlightenment era works--Defoe, Scott, Swift, Jonson, etc.
4. Read literary criticism, which is just as good as philosophy (and sometimes, as in my reading for Wednesday, IS philosophy--Plato's Republic).
and
5. Read about the English language and its development.
yay
1. Write plays.
2. Read Shakespeare.
3. Read other Elizabethan and Enlightenment era works--Defoe, Scott, Swift, Jonson, etc.
4. Read literary criticism, which is just as good as philosophy (and sometimes, as in my reading for Wednesday, IS philosophy--Plato's Republic).
and
5. Read about the English language and its development.
yay
Tuesday, September 01, 2009
Quote of the Week
Which, yes, is my cop-out for not actually posting.
Jessica. I am never merry when I hear sweet music.
Lorenzo. The reason is, your spirits are attentive:
For do but note a wild and wanton herd,
Or race of youthful and unhandled colts,
Fetching mad bounds, bellowing and neighing loud,
Which is the hot condition of their blood;
If they but hear perchance a trumpet sound,
Or any air of music touch their ears,
You shall perceive them make a mutual stand,
Their savage eyes turn'd to a modest gaze
By the sweet power of music: therefore the poet
Did feign that Orpheus drew trees, stones and floods;
Since nought so stockish, hard and full of rage,
But music for the time doth change his nature.
The man that hath no music in himself,
Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds,
Is fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils;
The motions of his spirit are dull as night
And his affections dark as Erebus:
Let no such man be trusted. Mark the music.
-Shakespeare, "The Merchant of Venice," Act V, Scene 1.
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
A Random Thought
Many years ago, when I was in grade school, I was watching The Swiss Family Robinson with a family of half a dozen or so friends of ours, homeschoolers. We reached the bit where the girl who you're still meant to think is a guy at that point is invited to sleep between the two brothers. S/he says s/he'd rather not. The oldest sister, who was four or five years older than I (and on whom I apparently had a crush--I was young enough that I remember very little) said, "Well, I wouldn't want to sleep between two boys."
To which I, thinking myself clever, responded, "Well I wouldn't want to sleep between two girls."
There was a rather mystifying complete silence.
As I grow older, I realize in more and more dimensions what I actually said.
It makes me laugh at night.
To which I, thinking myself clever, responded, "Well I wouldn't want to sleep between two girls."
There was a rather mystifying complete silence.
As I grow older, I realize in more and more dimensions what I actually said.
It makes me laugh at night.
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
Quote of the Week
"Mercy and truth, my friends, have met together," said the General. "Righteousness and bliss shall kiss one another."
..."Man, my friends," said General Lowenhielm, "is frail and foolish. We have all of us been told that grace is to be found in the universe. But in our human foolishness and short-sightedness we imagine divine grace to be finite. For this reason we tremble..." Never till now had the General stated that he trembled; he was genuinely surprised and even shocked at hearing his own voice proclaim the fact. "We tremble before making our choice in life, and after having made it again tremble in fear of having chosen wrong. But the moment comes when our eyes are opened, and we see and realize that grace is infinite. Grace, my friends, demands nothing from us but that we shall await it with confidence and acknowledge it in gratitude. Grace, brothers, makes no condition and singles out none ofus in particular; grace takes us all to its bosom and proclaims general amnesty. See! that which we have chosen is given us, and that which we have refused is, also and at the same time, granted us. Ay, that which we have rejected is poured upon us abundantly. For mercy and truth have met together, and righteousness and bliss shall kiss one another."
-"Babette's Feast," Isak Dinesen
Thursday, July 23, 2009
The Five Great Mysteries: Towards a Personal Aesthetic
That's a rather high-falutin' title, but all it means is that I'm trying to figure out some basic principles and guidelines as to what kind of writer I want to be. As such, this will be even moreso notes-to-self than most of my blog posts; but like always, I welcome questions, comments, and all other kinds of input.
John Updike said famously that he wrote about the three great mysteries: Religion, Art, and Sex. For my purposes here I'm going to add two more: Violence and Love.
Violence
I'm not actually sure that this is as great a Mystery as the other four, but it does share a lot of qualities with them. It is something everyone will experience, in some form or other. It is easy to become obsessed with (as our popular culture seems to have done). There is much classical precedent for this, of course: the Bible, the Greek Epics, in fact most epic stories and most mythology from all cultures--all of these are very violent.
As a culture we are, as mentioned, obsessed with it, to the point that our video games and movies and TV shows and (to a somewhat lesser extent) our literature are saturated with killings, death, murder--and fighting and abuse of all kinds. To quote a cliche that is nevertheless true, we are increasingly desensitized to it, to the point that we are allowing violence in movies to a degree that would have been unthinkable even a couple of decades ago, while taking the opposite approach to sex (but more on that in a bit).
Flannery O'Connor, a great Catholic writer and one of my literary heroes, once said that violence was a way to wake her characters up: "I have found that violence is strangely capable of returning my characters to reality and preparing them to accept their moment of grace." We see simulated violence all the time, but when it happens to us, we never expect it, and it becomes real, and the world becomes a much scarier place, and sometimes a place much more filled with grace. My challenge--the challenge of my generation of writers--is to make violence real once again, to use it not to exploit or titillate, but to wake up the sleeping reader and guide them to see the big, scary world around them. Quoting O'Connor again:
Sex
As a culture, we have two reactions to the topic of Sex, that seem to be polar opposites.
First, of course, we are obsessed with it. TV shows, movies, literature, even comic books seem to have ubiquitious sex scenes. It sells everything from sunglasses to medicine to politicians. Since the sixties, even the fifties, movies have been pushing the envelope as far as just what they're allowed to show, to the point that these days you can show pretty much anything (provided you don't mind an R or NC-17 rating, though usually just R). Literature seems bent on exploring the areas the movies don't get to. TV is sort of the last battlement, though it's a crumbling and poorly defended one.
This obsession, I think, is unhealthy.
The other reaction, which may simply be the physically lawful equal and opposite one, is summarily that of hiding. Certain segments of our culture--including the groups of conservatives, Lutherans, homeschoolers, and conservative Lutheran homeschoolers I tend to hang out with--have gone positively Victorian regarding sex. That is, you don't talk about it, you don't mention it (unless it's in a condemning voice regarding any kind of deviance), you don't refer to anything referring to it. You can talk about pregnancy, as long as no mention is made as to how it occurs; you can talk about giving birth, as long as no technical terms are used.
Strangely enough, the board of censors known as the MPAA (the people who determine movie ratings) seem to go along with this line of thought, to a certain extent. They'll allow extreme violence and torture, such as people are highly unlikely to ever see or experience, in a movie that very young children are allowed to see. However sex, which is something that the vast, vast majority of human beings will experience at some point in their lives, is something whose mere mention gets a movie a higher rating.
This Puritanism, I think, is also unhealthy, and just as dishonoring as the obsession.
Recently I read Frank Capra's autobiography, The Name Above the Title. Capra was a brilliant film director, his most famous movies being It's a Wonderful Life, Mr. Smith Goes To Washington, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, Meet John Doe, among others. He was a Sicilian immigrant, by birth a salt-of-the-earth Catholic. Of course, most of his films were made under the Hays Code, strongly restricting sexual content among other things. His book was under no such restriction. He talks about sex, when it comes up, frankly and openly. He does not obsess about it, but he does not avoid it or talk around it, either. He jokes about it occasionally. But he is almost never crude, and never disrespectful. He gives sex its due, which I think is all that should be asked.
He says, and Peter Bogdanovich says similar things, and I agree with both of them, that explicit sex scens in movies (and, I add, in literature) are one of the stupidest choices a director (or writer) can make. Unless your work is, like Updike's Couples, entirely about sex, there is no reason to show it. In fact, I find that sexual tension builds better the less sex is talked about. Tasteful fade-outs, people, tasteful fade-outs.
Religion
I anticipate being a writer in what many are calling a Post-Christian age. This is not to say that Christianity will go away, or even that it will cease to be a huge force in the world. But we will no longer have the cultural common ground of the Bible--it has been quarantined from secular discourse. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but it does change the rules somewhat.
Religion has not gone away. This is one thing I am and will be adamant about. Contemporary writers tend to ignore religion, because to introduce it in their text is to introduce an Issue that they then have to Address. The underlying assumption seems to be that we're all happy little Secular Humanists, which is a convenient one for telling a story. But with the amount of Christians still stubbornly clinging to their backward beliefs, and the amount of other non-atheists in the world--which is, in fact, the vast, vast, vast majority of people, surely it would be more authentic to assume some form of underlying religious belief, even if it is merely touched on.
Probably I should research other religions, learn enough so that everyone isn't Protestant in my fictional worlds. But at this point, that's my experience, so that's what they tend to be.
As far as being a religious writer, I don't think I could be as brilliantly overtly religious as Tolkien or Lewis. I tend more towards burying my symbolism--not so it's not there, just so that it's not exactly where it's expected, or what is expected. I model myself after Flannery O'Connor, Gene Wolfe, and Sufjan Stevens in this regard. (See O'Connor's "A Good Man is Hard to Find," or Stevens' song "Casimir Pulaski Day.")
Art
As for Art, I am firmly in the Oscar Wilde camp: "The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely. All art is quite useless." Art should not have to have a moral, an instructional value, a use, or even a point. All art should be true, a perfect (often mythical in the true sense of the word) reflection of the human experience, or it should be beautiful. The best art is both. See the Preface to Wilde's "The Picture of Dorian Gray" for more. I consider that my manifesto.
To go theological for a moment, God created humans for one purpose: to love them. He made a useless thing, and His only excuse was that he admired it intensely. That is, he loved it. The human artist is merely a shattered reflection of the Divine.
One example of this type of art is the cultural phenomenon-fad Napoleon Dynamite. It was in at least one way a perfect film, a perfect expression of art: its only intention was to make people laugh, and it succeeded millions of times over. It had some poignant moments, indeed almost some beautiful ones; but they served, eventually and sometimes simultaneously, to further the laughter. Few times have I come across as perfect an expression of the Divine in art. (Though I have a feeling the filmmakers would laugh if they read this.)
Love
Along with Violence and Sex, Love seems to complete the trinity of things with which our culture is obsessed. It's an interesting antidote to the other two: violence and sex, at least the way our culture thinks of them, are selfishly motivated. Love is by definition unselfish.
I find there is very little I can say that has not been said already, and better. I believe in true love; it is love that is true. (I can't link to it here because Nat has made his blog private, but subscribers should look at his post "Wuke Skywawker (geddit?)" from forever ago, which addresses this at length.)
I find myself not opposed to love at first sight, even if I am skeptical whenever it is mentioned. I used to smirk and say I believed rather in "lust at first sight," but having matured somewhat I can no longer do that. Who am I to put limits on when and how and where love is engendered?
Love is irritating and aggravating and mysterious, but I think Updike may have left it out of his Great Mysteries because really it is mainly Hard. It's hard to love; it's hard to love unconditionally. We know what we should do, and we don't do it. (Biblical reference here.)
My motus operandi so far seems to have been not to take the easy, trite, romantic comedy version of love, or even to take it and expand it so it's less trite and more actually true, though that would be a worthy endeavor. I seem to take it from the most unexpected angles, and look at how it tries, how it fails, how it works out anyway as the expression of a perfect thing expressed imperfectly by fallen creatures.
Cussing
Certainly not one of the great mysteries, but we are living in a profane age, and the topic is worth addressing briefly. I've been told a couple times that cussing in fiction is always unnecessary, which I found wrong and almost offensive. We live in a profane age, and to address certain aspects of life, indeed nearly any contemporary one, swearing and cursing are going to have to be dealt with. Even with Christians.
But I find it less and less tasteful in my own writing, to the point where unless it is absolutely necessary, I tend to leave it out. Maybe this is a sign of maturity. I dunno.
John Updike said famously that he wrote about the three great mysteries: Religion, Art, and Sex. For my purposes here I'm going to add two more: Violence and Love.
Violence
I'm not actually sure that this is as great a Mystery as the other four, but it does share a lot of qualities with them. It is something everyone will experience, in some form or other. It is easy to become obsessed with (as our popular culture seems to have done). There is much classical precedent for this, of course: the Bible, the Greek Epics, in fact most epic stories and most mythology from all cultures--all of these are very violent.
As a culture we are, as mentioned, obsessed with it, to the point that our video games and movies and TV shows and (to a somewhat lesser extent) our literature are saturated with killings, death, murder--and fighting and abuse of all kinds. To quote a cliche that is nevertheless true, we are increasingly desensitized to it, to the point that we are allowing violence in movies to a degree that would have been unthinkable even a couple of decades ago, while taking the opposite approach to sex (but more on that in a bit).
Flannery O'Connor, a great Catholic writer and one of my literary heroes, once said that violence was a way to wake her characters up: "I have found that violence is strangely capable of returning my characters to reality and preparing them to accept their moment of grace." We see simulated violence all the time, but when it happens to us, we never expect it, and it becomes real, and the world becomes a much scarier place, and sometimes a place much more filled with grace. My challenge--the challenge of my generation of writers--is to make violence real once again, to use it not to exploit or titillate, but to wake up the sleeping reader and guide them to see the big, scary world around them. Quoting O'Connor again:
The novelist with Christian concerns will find modern life distortions which are repugnant to him, and his problem will be to make these appear as distortions to an audience which is used to seeing them as natural; and he may well be forced to take ever more violent means to get his vision across to this hostile audience. When you can assume that your audience holds the same beliefs you do, you can relax a little and use more normal means of talking to it; when you have to assume that it does not, then you have to make your vision apparent by shock—to the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost-blind you draw large and startling figures.
Sex
As a culture, we have two reactions to the topic of Sex, that seem to be polar opposites.
First, of course, we are obsessed with it. TV shows, movies, literature, even comic books seem to have ubiquitious sex scenes. It sells everything from sunglasses to medicine to politicians. Since the sixties, even the fifties, movies have been pushing the envelope as far as just what they're allowed to show, to the point that these days you can show pretty much anything (provided you don't mind an R or NC-17 rating, though usually just R). Literature seems bent on exploring the areas the movies don't get to. TV is sort of the last battlement, though it's a crumbling and poorly defended one.
This obsession, I think, is unhealthy.
The other reaction, which may simply be the physically lawful equal and opposite one, is summarily that of hiding. Certain segments of our culture--including the groups of conservatives, Lutherans, homeschoolers, and conservative Lutheran homeschoolers I tend to hang out with--have gone positively Victorian regarding sex. That is, you don't talk about it, you don't mention it (unless it's in a condemning voice regarding any kind of deviance), you don't refer to anything referring to it. You can talk about pregnancy, as long as no mention is made as to how it occurs; you can talk about giving birth, as long as no technical terms are used.
Strangely enough, the board of censors known as the MPAA (the people who determine movie ratings) seem to go along with this line of thought, to a certain extent. They'll allow extreme violence and torture, such as people are highly unlikely to ever see or experience, in a movie that very young children are allowed to see. However sex, which is something that the vast, vast majority of human beings will experience at some point in their lives, is something whose mere mention gets a movie a higher rating.
This Puritanism, I think, is also unhealthy, and just as dishonoring as the obsession.
Recently I read Frank Capra's autobiography, The Name Above the Title. Capra was a brilliant film director, his most famous movies being It's a Wonderful Life, Mr. Smith Goes To Washington, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, Meet John Doe, among others. He was a Sicilian immigrant, by birth a salt-of-the-earth Catholic. Of course, most of his films were made under the Hays Code, strongly restricting sexual content among other things. His book was under no such restriction. He talks about sex, when it comes up, frankly and openly. He does not obsess about it, but he does not avoid it or talk around it, either. He jokes about it occasionally. But he is almost never crude, and never disrespectful. He gives sex its due, which I think is all that should be asked.
He says, and Peter Bogdanovich says similar things, and I agree with both of them, that explicit sex scens in movies (and, I add, in literature) are one of the stupidest choices a director (or writer) can make. Unless your work is, like Updike's Couples, entirely about sex, there is no reason to show it. In fact, I find that sexual tension builds better the less sex is talked about. Tasteful fade-outs, people, tasteful fade-outs.
Religion
I anticipate being a writer in what many are calling a Post-Christian age. This is not to say that Christianity will go away, or even that it will cease to be a huge force in the world. But we will no longer have the cultural common ground of the Bible--it has been quarantined from secular discourse. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but it does change the rules somewhat.
Religion has not gone away. This is one thing I am and will be adamant about. Contemporary writers tend to ignore religion, because to introduce it in their text is to introduce an Issue that they then have to Address. The underlying assumption seems to be that we're all happy little Secular Humanists, which is a convenient one for telling a story. But with the amount of Christians still stubbornly clinging to their backward beliefs, and the amount of other non-atheists in the world--which is, in fact, the vast, vast, vast majority of people, surely it would be more authentic to assume some form of underlying religious belief, even if it is merely touched on.
Probably I should research other religions, learn enough so that everyone isn't Protestant in my fictional worlds. But at this point, that's my experience, so that's what they tend to be.
As far as being a religious writer, I don't think I could be as brilliantly overtly religious as Tolkien or Lewis. I tend more towards burying my symbolism--not so it's not there, just so that it's not exactly where it's expected, or what is expected. I model myself after Flannery O'Connor, Gene Wolfe, and Sufjan Stevens in this regard. (See O'Connor's "A Good Man is Hard to Find," or Stevens' song "Casimir Pulaski Day.")
Art
As for Art, I am firmly in the Oscar Wilde camp: "The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely. All art is quite useless." Art should not have to have a moral, an instructional value, a use, or even a point. All art should be true, a perfect (often mythical in the true sense of the word) reflection of the human experience, or it should be beautiful. The best art is both. See the Preface to Wilde's "The Picture of Dorian Gray" for more. I consider that my manifesto.
To go theological for a moment, God created humans for one purpose: to love them. He made a useless thing, and His only excuse was that he admired it intensely. That is, he loved it. The human artist is merely a shattered reflection of the Divine.
One example of this type of art is the cultural phenomenon-fad Napoleon Dynamite. It was in at least one way a perfect film, a perfect expression of art: its only intention was to make people laugh, and it succeeded millions of times over. It had some poignant moments, indeed almost some beautiful ones; but they served, eventually and sometimes simultaneously, to further the laughter. Few times have I come across as perfect an expression of the Divine in art. (Though I have a feeling the filmmakers would laugh if they read this.)
Love
Along with Violence and Sex, Love seems to complete the trinity of things with which our culture is obsessed. It's an interesting antidote to the other two: violence and sex, at least the way our culture thinks of them, are selfishly motivated. Love is by definition unselfish.
I find there is very little I can say that has not been said already, and better. I believe in true love; it is love that is true. (I can't link to it here because Nat has made his blog private, but subscribers should look at his post "Wuke Skywawker (geddit?)" from forever ago, which addresses this at length.)
I find myself not opposed to love at first sight, even if I am skeptical whenever it is mentioned. I used to smirk and say I believed rather in "lust at first sight," but having matured somewhat I can no longer do that. Who am I to put limits on when and how and where love is engendered?
Love is irritating and aggravating and mysterious, but I think Updike may have left it out of his Great Mysteries because really it is mainly Hard. It's hard to love; it's hard to love unconditionally. We know what we should do, and we don't do it. (Biblical reference here.)
My motus operandi so far seems to have been not to take the easy, trite, romantic comedy version of love, or even to take it and expand it so it's less trite and more actually true, though that would be a worthy endeavor. I seem to take it from the most unexpected angles, and look at how it tries, how it fails, how it works out anyway as the expression of a perfect thing expressed imperfectly by fallen creatures.
Cussing
Certainly not one of the great mysteries, but we are living in a profane age, and the topic is worth addressing briefly. I've been told a couple times that cussing in fiction is always unnecessary, which I found wrong and almost offensive. We live in a profane age, and to address certain aspects of life, indeed nearly any contemporary one, swearing and cursing are going to have to be dealt with. Even with Christians.
But I find it less and less tasteful in my own writing, to the point where unless it is absolutely necessary, I tend to leave it out. Maybe this is a sign of maturity. I dunno.
Monday, July 13, 2009
Happiness
The other day a friend of mine said he read an article about How To Make Money. Number 11, apparently, was Don't Be An English Or Art Major.
So I said that I read an article called How To Give A Rat's Rear End Whether You Make Money or Not, and Number 1 was Don't Be An English Or Art Major.
I further said I read an Article called How To Be Fulfilled and Happy With Your Station in Life Almost No Matter Where You Are, and Number 1 was BE an English or Art Major.
In all of these, Music and Theater majors should have been included, but we can assume they fall under the general heading of Art.
The two articles I claimed I had read were not real articles. They were lies. But they were lies that were perfectly true, which is a concept an English or Art or Music or Theater Major would Understand.
So I said that I read an article called How To Give A Rat's Rear End Whether You Make Money or Not, and Number 1 was Don't Be An English Or Art Major.
I further said I read an Article called How To Be Fulfilled and Happy With Your Station in Life Almost No Matter Where You Are, and Number 1 was BE an English or Art Major.
In all of these, Music and Theater majors should have been included, but we can assume they fall under the general heading of Art.
The two articles I claimed I had read were not real articles. They were lies. But they were lies that were perfectly true, which is a concept an English or Art or Music or Theater Major would Understand.
Hey Look, I Can Write About My Dreams
This one I had while in Door County, and it took place in Door County. I knew this, even though none of the actual locations are there. First I was at a restaurant that was I Love Funky's combined with various small restaurants I've been to combined with every used bookstore. But there weren't many books--you had to climb a step ladder to get to a shelf in a closet to get at them.
Then I was walking up the back steps at BLC, and the FedEx guy was there, with a package, trying to get someone to sign for it. This, I think, was a leftover from my work-study job this past year, for which I (among other things) signed for a lot of packages. The FedEx guy seemed to recognize me, and he said, "The only difference is, you're a civilian now," but he let me sign anyway.
Then he started to run away and I asked why he was running. Then I realized the package I had signed for and was still holding was emitting a ticking sound. The FedEx guy called back, "A ticking package? In a building full of illegals?"
So then I dropped the package and started running but he stopped and stared back at the building and said, "Wait... it's not a bomb." I tackled him just as the place exploded. "It's always a bomb," I said. "Yeah, don't get smart," he said, as we both picked ourselves up. Then instead of the FedEx guy he was a half-Native American woman, and I was either Matt Damon or Ben Afleck, and we were both cops and this whole thing was actually the beginning of a movie about two wise-cracking cops who investigate attacks on illegal immigrants, which sounds like a pretty marketable concept these days, if you ask me. The only person to die in the bomb blast was either Will Smith or Matt Damon, perhaps depending on who I actually was.
The second dream is from the night before last. Heidi and Tarja were moving out of their parents' house and into a tree house which had several levels. They were happily showing a camera crew around. But the camera crew, rather than being inside the house, was hovering outside its windows.
There was a commentary track running over the dream as well, like on a DVD. I kept being confused as to whether to pay attention to what Heidi and Tarja were saying or to the commentary track, which I was finding very interesting because it was all about how they got the camera shots and stuff. The only line I actually remember is, "We got this shot by hanging from the bellies of spider-monkeys."
Psychoanalyze away.
Then I was walking up the back steps at BLC, and the FedEx guy was there, with a package, trying to get someone to sign for it. This, I think, was a leftover from my work-study job this past year, for which I (among other things) signed for a lot of packages. The FedEx guy seemed to recognize me, and he said, "The only difference is, you're a civilian now," but he let me sign anyway.
Then he started to run away and I asked why he was running. Then I realized the package I had signed for and was still holding was emitting a ticking sound. The FedEx guy called back, "A ticking package? In a building full of illegals?"
So then I dropped the package and started running but he stopped and stared back at the building and said, "Wait... it's not a bomb." I tackled him just as the place exploded. "It's always a bomb," I said. "Yeah, don't get smart," he said, as we both picked ourselves up. Then instead of the FedEx guy he was a half-Native American woman, and I was either Matt Damon or Ben Afleck, and we were both cops and this whole thing was actually the beginning of a movie about two wise-cracking cops who investigate attacks on illegal immigrants, which sounds like a pretty marketable concept these days, if you ask me. The only person to die in the bomb blast was either Will Smith or Matt Damon, perhaps depending on who I actually was.
The second dream is from the night before last. Heidi and Tarja were moving out of their parents' house and into a tree house which had several levels. They were happily showing a camera crew around. But the camera crew, rather than being inside the house, was hovering outside its windows.
There was a commentary track running over the dream as well, like on a DVD. I kept being confused as to whether to pay attention to what Heidi and Tarja were saying or to the commentary track, which I was finding very interesting because it was all about how they got the camera shots and stuff. The only line I actually remember is, "We got this shot by hanging from the bellies of spider-monkeys."
Psychoanalyze away.
Friday, July 03, 2009
Personal Library
Since this is apparently a thing now, and because I have too much time on my hands not working, I have counted up my personal library. I have counted by volume, rather than by title. These are only the books that are currently in my room--Zeke has at least a dozen on semi-permanent loan, there are a couple dozen or so loaned farther afield, and I have at least a couple dozen (mostly literature) stored at school.
Current total: 556
Contemporary Fantasy/SF: 145
Literature/Classics: 133
Old (Pre-Tolkien) Fantasy: 40
Contemporary/Genre Fiction: 26
Philosophy: 16
History: 75
Writing/Lit. Crit.: 14
Foreign Language: 10
Irish: 13
Film: 3
Miscellaneous: 9
Psychology: 5
Mad Magazine Books: 27
Biographies: 5
Mark Twain (by and about): 35
Of these, I've read perhaps 150, maybe closer to 200.
Current total: 556
Contemporary Fantasy/SF: 145
Literature/Classics: 133
Old (Pre-Tolkien) Fantasy: 40
Contemporary/Genre Fiction: 26
Philosophy: 16
History: 75
Writing/Lit. Crit.: 14
Foreign Language: 10
Irish: 13
Film: 3
Miscellaneous: 9
Psychology: 5
Mad Magazine Books: 27
Biographies: 5
Mark Twain (by and about): 35
Of these, I've read perhaps 150, maybe closer to 200.
Sunday, June 28, 2009
New Plan
And I'm back in Madison, looking (rather unsuccessfully) for another job. The story isn't that exciting. Invitation to visit remains open, however.
Sunday, May 17, 2009
Summer!
Well, the end of this school year seems considerably less climactic than the end of the last one. Though, I didn't let myself get rushed into a relationship I didn't ultimately want this year, so I suppose there are always trade-offs.
The main point of this post is to talk about my summer plans. That is, it is a pre-emptive excuse post for not blogging all summer.
I got a job as a cook at a restaurant up in Door County, WI, which for those who don't know is the "thumb" of Wisconsin, the bit of a peninsula jutting into Lake Michigan. It's a beautiful place, and I'm happy to be going there. I will miss people around Madison, by which I largely mean my family and the Book Klub.
I may also miss the internet, for what with my own sad computer situation (having a crappy old laptop which in theory has internet capabilities but in practice is a piece of crap), I will probably end up using a lot of library computers, and librarians watch you like hawks to make sure you don't overstay your time.
Which means, peoples, for all of you to email me and Facebook me! Random messages, at random times, whenever you feel like it! Seriously! You know how bad I am at keeping in touch when I have regular computer access; well, think of me without it.
Also, you can call me on my cell phone. If you don't have my number and want it, tell me.
That's about it. Have a good summer, all. If anyone makes it up toward Door County, look me up. Seriously.
The main point of this post is to talk about my summer plans. That is, it is a pre-emptive excuse post for not blogging all summer.
I got a job as a cook at a restaurant up in Door County, WI, which for those who don't know is the "thumb" of Wisconsin, the bit of a peninsula jutting into Lake Michigan. It's a beautiful place, and I'm happy to be going there. I will miss people around Madison, by which I largely mean my family and the Book Klub.
I may also miss the internet, for what with my own sad computer situation (having a crappy old laptop which in theory has internet capabilities but in practice is a piece of crap), I will probably end up using a lot of library computers, and librarians watch you like hawks to make sure you don't overstay your time.
Which means, peoples, for all of you to email me and Facebook me! Random messages, at random times, whenever you feel like it! Seriously! You know how bad I am at keeping in touch when I have regular computer access; well, think of me without it.
Also, you can call me on my cell phone. If you don't have my number and want it, tell me.
That's about it. Have a good summer, all. If anyone makes it up toward Door County, look me up. Seriously.
Saturday, May 09, 2009
Absurdism And Other Things
These are a lot of random, semi-connected thoughts I've been having lately, that I'm trying to connect. Hold on tight.
Jazz and Absurdism are my first thoughts.
I began reading the book Blue Like Jazz the other day. It's a questing, poetic book about Christian spirituality in the postmodern world. The opening Author's Note reads like this:
I'm going to leave that there, hanging a bit awkwardly, for a bit before I return to it.
Absurdism. It's on my mind because here at Bethany we recently had our Director's Showcase. Everyone in the (Theatre) Directing class takes a scene from a play, recruits actors, and directs said scene, putting it on at this Showcase. This time the theme was unrealism, which mainly translated into Absurdism. I was in three different scenes, two from plays by Eugene Ionesco, who perhaps most famously wrote Rhinocerous. One of these scenes was from The Bald Soprano, which is subtitled an "Anti-play." It is basically full of nonsense dialogue:
"I can buy an egg for my brother, but you can't buy Ireland for your grandfather."
"One walks on his feet, but one heats with electricity or coal."
"One can sit on a chair, when the chair doesn't have any."
"One must always think of everything."
And so forth. This is typical absurdism. It is very existential, often; it reflects on a modern world and a modern experience that is, well, absurd. I'm sure that, were I younger, I would fail to like absurdism, perhaps because it doesn't resolve.
There is a type of person I have encountered often. They dislike jazz, absurdism, stories or movies that don't have an Aristotelian climactic structure. They almost always dislike Napoleon Dynamite. Usually they object to experimental art of any kind. The objection is often along these lines:
"It doesn't make sense."
"It doesn't have a point."
"It's ridiculous."
I don't mean to stereotype, but it's true when I say I've met many people whose opinions and expressions in these matters can fit exactly over one another, like a one-size-fits-all pair of spandex pants. And maybe what I'm describing is simply people who are "normal," although I object to the idea of there being a truly, deeply "normal" person in existence.
But wait. While it's implied in their judgments, the above-typified "normal" people have said nothing about a crucial topic: Truth. These people seem to be saying that all this lack of resolution is wrong, which implies a moral judgment as to their truth. But, perhaps because they don't think of it, our amateur critics don't say it.
In the second chapter of Reading Like A Writer, Francine Prose quotes Hemingway's method of writing fiction:
She expressed confusion over his use of the word "truth" as regards obviously fictional writing, saying that perhaps he has made the common mistake of confusing truth with beauty. I could not object more. There is all kinds of truth to be found in fiction, frequently more and deeper truth than can be found in non-fiction or in "real life." Dreams are only rarely beautiful, but they are always on some level true.
Another thing that "normal" people, even "normal" literary-minded people, often shun and run from is that oft-derided branch of literature known as Fantasy. Before its ascent in popularity beginning in the 30s Pulp magazines, the Victorians (who in literary taste if not in morality are the analogues of our currently-defined "normal" person) shunned fantasy and relegated it to the nursery, the children's book, and the seamy shops which the sort of person who has never outgrown his crutches of infantilism and substance abuse might frequent.
Perhaps not coincidentally, something that has often struck me about old fantasy (that is, fantasy before and up to Tolkien) is its often searing truth. A perfect example comes from Cabell's Jurgen:
This is not only beautiful, but also, in a poetic-device-riddled way, very true.
Or, in a further passage from the same book. The Centuar is speaking to Jurgen about the garden they are in, The Garden Between Dawn and Sunrise:
This passage, though beautifully written, is emphatically not beautiful. It is sad, it is tearful, it is depressing, perhaps somewhat cynical. It is also very, very true. Again, this is truth in the way a poem is true, or a dream.
Lud-in-the-Mist, another forgotten and shunned fantasy classic, contains statements even less poetic and even more bald in their truth.
What is my point here? Is it that jazz is true, that Absurdism, with all its postmodern despair, is true too?
Well, what if, as our increasingly theoretical amateur critic implies, the opposite is so? What if all music should resolve, all stories should makes sense, dialogue following itself like a pack of wolves on a scent or a regiment of soldiers marching in step? If this is a reflection of truth, it seems to me, then life should make perfect sense. Economic and political systems that make sense should work. Theories that seem airtight should always prove to be true. Drawing should be as simple as tracing the lines one sees. People should be nice to one another. Relationships should be tit-for-tat, easy to screw up, but easy to succeed at. Life should be simple and easy to figure out.
Is any of this the case? Of course not. The world is not simple. The world doesn't make sense. So why should art have to make sense? Why should art have to resolve? Why should we even expect it to? I can come up with smug platitudes to answer these, but they taste to me of the bitterest kind of sophistry and closed thinking.
Perhaps art should be an escape, and often it is. Often it takes the stuff of real life, and creates a miniature world which looks very much like real life, but which makes sense, which resolves, in which everything that is begun ends, and everything that is started finishes in one way or another. But this seems to me a cheap cop-out; good art, even good popular escapist art, should be true; for art is one of the deepest mysteries. Even an escape from real life should contain in it truth about that life. And it is possible to unite the two.
Take, for example, Lord of the Rings. I wish I had my very beat-up paperback copy of the Trilogy with me; for nostalgic purposes, and because I could find one of the many, many very true passages within it and quote it here. Many of my readers will have their own copies. I challenge you to open any volume and read for twenty pages without encountering some profound truth about life, the universe, and everything.
The movies are this way, too, to an extent. They don't always have the grandeur of Tolkien's language or quite the profundity of his thought, but they capture the spirit of the books extremely well.
And this is a trilogy of books and especially of movies that my theoretical amateur critic would distinctly love, for many and probably most of the people I've experienced to make this theoretical straw man do love the books and/or the movies.
There are a lot of ways, it seems to me, that these thoughts could relate to God. But it is getting late, and I have been blathering on for far too long anyway. I will leave the reader to make the reader's own connections.
Jazz and Absurdism are my first thoughts.
I began reading the book Blue Like Jazz the other day. It's a questing, poetic book about Christian spirituality in the postmodern world. The opening Author's Note reads like this:
I never liked jazz music because jazz music doesn't resolve. But I was outside the Bagdad Theater in Portland one night when I saw a man playing the saxaphone. I stood there for fifteen minutes, and he never opened his eyes.
After that I liked jazz music.
Sometimes you have to watch somebody love something before you can love it yourself. It is as if they are showing you the way.
I used to not like God because God didn't resolve. But that was before any of this happened.
I'm going to leave that there, hanging a bit awkwardly, for a bit before I return to it.
Absurdism. It's on my mind because here at Bethany we recently had our Director's Showcase. Everyone in the (Theatre) Directing class takes a scene from a play, recruits actors, and directs said scene, putting it on at this Showcase. This time the theme was unrealism, which mainly translated into Absurdism. I was in three different scenes, two from plays by Eugene Ionesco, who perhaps most famously wrote Rhinocerous. One of these scenes was from The Bald Soprano, which is subtitled an "Anti-play." It is basically full of nonsense dialogue:
"I can buy an egg for my brother, but you can't buy Ireland for your grandfather."
"One walks on his feet, but one heats with electricity or coal."
"One can sit on a chair, when the chair doesn't have any."
"One must always think of everything."
And so forth. This is typical absurdism. It is very existential, often; it reflects on a modern world and a modern experience that is, well, absurd. I'm sure that, were I younger, I would fail to like absurdism, perhaps because it doesn't resolve.
There is a type of person I have encountered often. They dislike jazz, absurdism, stories or movies that don't have an Aristotelian climactic structure. They almost always dislike Napoleon Dynamite. Usually they object to experimental art of any kind. The objection is often along these lines:
"It doesn't make sense."
"It doesn't have a point."
"It's ridiculous."
I don't mean to stereotype, but it's true when I say I've met many people whose opinions and expressions in these matters can fit exactly over one another, like a one-size-fits-all pair of spandex pants. And maybe what I'm describing is simply people who are "normal," although I object to the idea of there being a truly, deeply "normal" person in existence.
But wait. While it's implied in their judgments, the above-typified "normal" people have said nothing about a crucial topic: Truth. These people seem to be saying that all this lack of resolution is wrong, which implies a moral judgment as to their truth. But, perhaps because they don't think of it, our amateur critics don't say it.
In the second chapter of Reading Like A Writer, Francine Prose quotes Hemingway's method of writing fiction:
Sometimes when I was started on a new story and I could not get going... I would stand and look out over the roofs of Paris and think, "Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence you know." So finally I would write one true sentence, and then go on from there.
She expressed confusion over his use of the word "truth" as regards obviously fictional writing, saying that perhaps he has made the common mistake of confusing truth with beauty. I could not object more. There is all kinds of truth to be found in fiction, frequently more and deeper truth than can be found in non-fiction or in "real life." Dreams are only rarely beautiful, but they are always on some level true.
Another thing that "normal" people, even "normal" literary-minded people, often shun and run from is that oft-derided branch of literature known as Fantasy. Before its ascent in popularity beginning in the 30s Pulp magazines, the Victorians (who in literary taste if not in morality are the analogues of our currently-defined "normal" person) shunned fantasy and relegated it to the nursery, the children's book, and the seamy shops which the sort of person who has never outgrown his crutches of infantilism and substance abuse might frequent.
Perhaps not coincidentally, something that has often struck me about old fantasy (that is, fantasy before and up to Tolkien) is its often searing truth. A perfect example comes from Cabell's Jurgen:
For now had come toward them, walking together in the dawn, a handsome boy and girl. And the girl was incredibly beautiful, because everybody in the garden saw her with the vision of the boy who was with her.
This is not only beautiful, but also, in a poetic-device-riddled way, very true.
Or, in a further passage from the same book. The Centuar is speaking to Jurgen about the garden they are in, The Garden Between Dawn and Sunrise:
"For in this garden," said the Centaur, "each man that ever lived has sojourned for a little while, with no company save his illusions. I must tell you again that in this garden are encountered none but imaginary creatures. And stalwart persons take their hour of recreation here, and go hence unaccompanied, to become aldermen and respected merchants and bishops, and to be admired as captains upon prancing horses, or even as kings upon tall thrones; each in his station thinking not at all of the garden ever any more. But now and then come timid persons, Jurgen, who fear to leave this garden without an escort: so these must need go hence with one or another imaginary creature, to guide them about alleys and by-paths, because imaginary creatures find little nourishment in the public highways, and shun them..."
This passage, though beautifully written, is emphatically not beautiful. It is sad, it is tearful, it is depressing, perhaps somewhat cynical. It is also very, very true. Again, this is truth in the way a poem is true, or a dream.
Lud-in-the-Mist, another forgotten and shunned fantasy classic, contains statements even less poetic and even more bald in their truth.
...though, indeed, it is never safe to classify the souls of one's neighbors; one is apt, in the long run, to be proved a fool. You should regard each meeting with a friend as a sitting he is unwittingly giving you for a portrait--a portrait that, probably, when you or he die, will still be unfinished. And, though this is an absorbing pursuit, nevertheless, the painters are apt to end pessimists. For however handsome and merry may be the face, however rich may be the background, in the first rough sketch of each portrait, yet with every added stroke of the brush, with every tiny readjustment of the "values," with every modification of the chiaroscuro, the eyes looking out at you grow more disquieting. And, finally, it is your own face that you are staring at in terror, as in a mirror by candle-light, when all the house is still.
What is my point here? Is it that jazz is true, that Absurdism, with all its postmodern despair, is true too?
Well, what if, as our increasingly theoretical amateur critic implies, the opposite is so? What if all music should resolve, all stories should makes sense, dialogue following itself like a pack of wolves on a scent or a regiment of soldiers marching in step? If this is a reflection of truth, it seems to me, then life should make perfect sense. Economic and political systems that make sense should work. Theories that seem airtight should always prove to be true. Drawing should be as simple as tracing the lines one sees. People should be nice to one another. Relationships should be tit-for-tat, easy to screw up, but easy to succeed at. Life should be simple and easy to figure out.
Is any of this the case? Of course not. The world is not simple. The world doesn't make sense. So why should art have to make sense? Why should art have to resolve? Why should we even expect it to? I can come up with smug platitudes to answer these, but they taste to me of the bitterest kind of sophistry and closed thinking.
Perhaps art should be an escape, and often it is. Often it takes the stuff of real life, and creates a miniature world which looks very much like real life, but which makes sense, which resolves, in which everything that is begun ends, and everything that is started finishes in one way or another. But this seems to me a cheap cop-out; good art, even good popular escapist art, should be true; for art is one of the deepest mysteries. Even an escape from real life should contain in it truth about that life. And it is possible to unite the two.
Take, for example, Lord of the Rings. I wish I had my very beat-up paperback copy of the Trilogy with me; for nostalgic purposes, and because I could find one of the many, many very true passages within it and quote it here. Many of my readers will have their own copies. I challenge you to open any volume and read for twenty pages without encountering some profound truth about life, the universe, and everything.
The movies are this way, too, to an extent. They don't always have the grandeur of Tolkien's language or quite the profundity of his thought, but they capture the spirit of the books extremely well.
And this is a trilogy of books and especially of movies that my theoretical amateur critic would distinctly love, for many and probably most of the people I've experienced to make this theoretical straw man do love the books and/or the movies.
There are a lot of ways, it seems to me, that these thoughts could relate to God. But it is getting late, and I have been blathering on for far too long anyway. I will leave the reader to make the reader's own connections.
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