The prostitute played by Elizabeth Berkeley (of SAVED BY THE BELL and SHOWGIRLS fame, or infamy) in Oliver Stone's ANY GIVEN SUNDAY had it right -- there's something about his eyes.
Jamie Foxx's, that is.
The other night I watched ANY GIVEN SUNDAY for the sixth or seventh time, and it gets better with every viewing, denser, and Foxx's performance gets better, too. (You have to understand: I am an Oliver Stone nut. A whole other Stone post awaits, so you've been warned.)
There's a scene near the end of the film, right before the big game, where Al Pacino, playing football coach Tony D'Amato, gives his pre-game speech. And what a speech it is, the end-all, be-all of pre-game speeches. It is not about football, but about life. It is not about his team, but about himself. It is not about Pacino, but about Stone. It is heavy handed and over-the-top and wonderful. And there's a passage in the speech where Pacino talks about teamwork, about being there for one another, and the camera stays on Foxx's face, slowly, slowly tracking into his eyes, and his character, who throughout the film has been a loud-mouth, arrogant prick, changes; his character alters. We see it right before our eyes, and it's nothing magical, nothing tactical; we simply see a level of sudden compassion and understanding and emotion in Foxx's eyes that tells us everything we need to know.
Foxx is the real deal. He was brilliant in ANY GIVEN SUNDAY, and even more so in Will Smith's ALI. I thought he was great in Stone's flick; after seeing him play the middle-aged, overweight, black, Jewish, white-woman loving Bundini Brown in ALI, I thought to myself: My God, this man is an actor. He's not just a comedian, even though I don't really believe there's such a thing as being 'just' a comedian, as I explain below. This may sound ludicrous, but Foxx (real name Eric Bishop, from small town Texas), reminds me a little bit of DeNiro. Foxx does not play a persona; he plays a character, and becomes the character, and we believe it. Completely.
Then came RAY, of course, which I saw most of on DVD. ('Most of' because the film cut out near the end -- did he get his sight back?) The most remarkable thing about that performance was not the mimicry of the real musician, but the fact that Foxx pulled it off without the use of his most powerful asset -- his eyes.
Last night I watched one of Foxx's stand-up comedy specials taped in 2002, and the man is very, very funny. Not Eddie Murphy funny, but funny nevertheless. His impressions are unreal -- Shaq, Prince, Pacino. He is not afraid to diss his fellow black entertainers: Whitney Houston, Bobby Brown, and LL Cool J all come under fire. (His bit about LL Cool J is particularly funny, talking about how his co-star in ANY GIVEN SUNDAY didn't seem to realize that they were making a movie, not playing a real football game, and that the angry words Foxx was exchanging with him were based on a script, not reality.) Oh, and his rationale for why O.J. is guilty simply based on his body movements is hilarious. (Ask me about it sometime.)
Now, Foxx has very little in common with Don Knotts, but I have to give Knotts his proper props, given that he's been in the news lately, mostly because his home state of West Virginia is about to give him a star on their newly formed walk of fame. And if getting a star on the West Virginia Walk of Fame is not prime material for a blog, then what the hell is?
The thing is, both Foxx and Knotts are comedians. And understand me here: I love Don Knotts. I think his work on THE ANDY GRIFFITH SHOW, not to mention THREE'S COMPANY, is classic. It's real. It's honest and it's human.
Comedians like Foxx often become great dramatic actors because comedy is all about finding the truth of a situation. If something's real, we laugh. If it isn't, silence rules the room. But I don't think comedians should be relegated to the back room of actingdom. I think somebody like Don Knotts is sincerely, genuinely worthy of our admiration because when we laugh at his antics, at his eye-rolls, out his sheer ridiculous, we are laughing because he has struck something authentic within ourselves. When we laugh, we are connected to something outside of ourselves, and great comedians can provide that link. (Not to mention how much of my childhood was spent imitating Don Knotts as Mr.Furley doing his karate chops. As Jim Carrey once said: 'Imitation is the sincerest form of copying.' But it always brought a good laugh...)
So here's to Jamie Foxx and Don Knotts, unlikely partners in crime, separated by two comedic generations, but deserving of all the accolades that are coming their way. (You can debate amongst yourselves what's worth more: An Oscar or a West Virginian star.)
We look to comedians to provide a respite from the realities of, um, reality. And I have to say this: Whenever I see these two guys in action, I laugh. (And when I see Foxx do drama, I empathize.) I relate. When I see Knotts do his schtick, I'm reminded of the silliness inside of ourselves we so rarely allow out.
That may not sound like much to you, but in this short life of ours, a little bit of laughter, a little bit of empathy, can go a long, long way.
Thursday, May 12, 2005
Wednesday, May 11, 2005
THE EVIL OF TWO LESSERS
It's just so complicated, is what I'm saying. The whole thing. All of its aspects.
(For those that came late, I'm not talking about the theory of relativity or the two Darrens on BEWITCHED, although those two things right there are pretty complicated in and of themselves, and both concepts, the relativity one and the two Darrens one, screwed me up big time as a kid. I mean, you can't just switch the lead actor like that -- you can't. It's not fair. )
It's a very strange feeling indeed to wake up one day and take a look around and realize that you have not only gotten used to the idea of child labor, but you expect it, too.
The kids in front of the supermarket hawking papers. The children toiling behind their mother's cart as she goes round the city collecting garbage and tins, metal and refuse. The little tykes who diligently scrounge alongside their siblings through the endless black garbage bags that litter Phnom Penh's streets like wretched treasure chests torn asunder.
These are child laborers. They exist. They're authentic. It was an electric shock to my system to learn that these poor and desperate kids are not just random, flickering images of guilt designed for Jack Nicholson's epiphany in ABOUT SCHIMDT, or convenient emotional scapegoats broadcast every few months on PRIMETIME LIVE, or holograms of tsunami-like degradation glimpsed between brilliant, snow-white flashes of Katie Couric's Joker-like grin on the TODAY show. They are all around (if you care to look, know where to look), sleeping on the streets, shitting in the sewers, sniffing up glue. They are small and stunted, dirty and smelly, smiling and honest, these kids are, and I've seen them so much, so often over the last few years that I wonder if I truly recognize how absurdly tragic their endless situation truly is.
The realness of these kids and their plight are what make the concept of sweatshops such a difficult one to reconcile. Of course no rational human being wants children working ten hours a day in a factory designed to keep Kathie Lee Gifford in designer duds the rest of her life. (Then again, no rational supreme being would knowingly construct Kathie Lee Gifford in the first place, but that's a whole other post.) No sensible, sensitive adult could possibly advocate kids stuck inside in dark and gloomy factories that make Dickens'darkened hovels look like Romper Room.
And yet...
As I mentioned previously (for those who were taking a leak during the last few posts, or watching AMERICAN IDOL, or contemplating Proust, or ignoring your mother-in-law), Cambodia has recently had the supreme honor of being voted the 10th worst country to live in for children and women. Why? No drinkable water. No employment. Early death. You name it, Cambodia's got it.
Cambodian families are big. Lots of people. Lots of mouths to feed.
All too often, kids no older than five or six have to go off and earn some coin for their siblings and parents. If they don't, no one will eat. If they don't, terrible medicine can't be bought. It's sad and unfair, and it happens every day.
I have no answers. The great travel writer Pico Iyer said that the purpose of travel is not to find answers, but to find better questions.
I ask myself a lot of questions here. Some are random and silly, others are profound (to me, anyway). Most are in between.
Seeing kids work, out of school, selling you stuff, collecting trash, makes your heart break and your mind whirl. (They are also nicer kids than any you would ever want to meet back home. Cue the breaking heart; cue the whirling mind...) The kids I see outside the shops begging and working should, instead, be relaxing at home, should, instead, be kids -- playing video games, watching cartoons, farting on their little brothers' faces while holding their heads down with oversized cushions.
They shouldn't be outside, under the sun, wasting their lives away.
But they are. And their families prosper because of it. And a sweatshop, hideous as they are, would actually be a step up for most of these kids, and their families.
I'm not saying it's right. I'm not saying it's good. But living here has taught me that not only is it not a perfect world, it's not necessarily even a good one, let alone a fair one. Nine, ten hours a day under the hot sun, selling newspapers, or nine, ten hours a day in a sultry sweatshop, stitching clothes, is not much of a choice -- the evil of two lessers, I guess you could say.
The tragic thing is, in Cambodia, there usually isn't any choice at all.
(For those that came late, I'm not talking about the theory of relativity or the two Darrens on BEWITCHED, although those two things right there are pretty complicated in and of themselves, and both concepts, the relativity one and the two Darrens one, screwed me up big time as a kid. I mean, you can't just switch the lead actor like that -- you can't. It's not fair. )
It's a very strange feeling indeed to wake up one day and take a look around and realize that you have not only gotten used to the idea of child labor, but you expect it, too.
The kids in front of the supermarket hawking papers. The children toiling behind their mother's cart as she goes round the city collecting garbage and tins, metal and refuse. The little tykes who diligently scrounge alongside their siblings through the endless black garbage bags that litter Phnom Penh's streets like wretched treasure chests torn asunder.
These are child laborers. They exist. They're authentic. It was an electric shock to my system to learn that these poor and desperate kids are not just random, flickering images of guilt designed for Jack Nicholson's epiphany in ABOUT SCHIMDT, or convenient emotional scapegoats broadcast every few months on PRIMETIME LIVE, or holograms of tsunami-like degradation glimpsed between brilliant, snow-white flashes of Katie Couric's Joker-like grin on the TODAY show. They are all around (if you care to look, know where to look), sleeping on the streets, shitting in the sewers, sniffing up glue. They are small and stunted, dirty and smelly, smiling and honest, these kids are, and I've seen them so much, so often over the last few years that I wonder if I truly recognize how absurdly tragic their endless situation truly is.
The realness of these kids and their plight are what make the concept of sweatshops such a difficult one to reconcile. Of course no rational human being wants children working ten hours a day in a factory designed to keep Kathie Lee Gifford in designer duds the rest of her life. (Then again, no rational supreme being would knowingly construct Kathie Lee Gifford in the first place, but that's a whole other post.) No sensible, sensitive adult could possibly advocate kids stuck inside in dark and gloomy factories that make Dickens'darkened hovels look like Romper Room.
And yet...
As I mentioned previously (for those who were taking a leak during the last few posts, or watching AMERICAN IDOL, or contemplating Proust, or ignoring your mother-in-law), Cambodia has recently had the supreme honor of being voted the 10th worst country to live in for children and women. Why? No drinkable water. No employment. Early death. You name it, Cambodia's got it.
Cambodian families are big. Lots of people. Lots of mouths to feed.
All too often, kids no older than five or six have to go off and earn some coin for their siblings and parents. If they don't, no one will eat. If they don't, terrible medicine can't be bought. It's sad and unfair, and it happens every day.
I have no answers. The great travel writer Pico Iyer said that the purpose of travel is not to find answers, but to find better questions.
I ask myself a lot of questions here. Some are random and silly, others are profound (to me, anyway). Most are in between.
Seeing kids work, out of school, selling you stuff, collecting trash, makes your heart break and your mind whirl. (They are also nicer kids than any you would ever want to meet back home. Cue the breaking heart; cue the whirling mind...) The kids I see outside the shops begging and working should, instead, be relaxing at home, should, instead, be kids -- playing video games, watching cartoons, farting on their little brothers' faces while holding their heads down with oversized cushions.
They shouldn't be outside, under the sun, wasting their lives away.
But they are. And their families prosper because of it. And a sweatshop, hideous as they are, would actually be a step up for most of these kids, and their families.
I'm not saying it's right. I'm not saying it's good. But living here has taught me that not only is it not a perfect world, it's not necessarily even a good one, let alone a fair one. Nine, ten hours a day under the hot sun, selling newspapers, or nine, ten hours a day in a sultry sweatshop, stitching clothes, is not much of a choice -- the evil of two lessers, I guess you could say.
The tragic thing is, in Cambodia, there usually isn't any choice at all.
Tuesday, May 10, 2005
REGRETS, WE (MEANING HUMANS)'VE HAD A FEW, BUT TOO FEW TO MENTION (IN THE WORDS OF SINATRA)
Imagine that!
An entire walkway, road, overpass or avenue devoted to you and you alone, but not to your charitable works, no, nor to that oh-so-memorable time you escorted not one, not two, but an entire cavalcade of little old ladies across the street (at rush hour no less), but, instead, these series of streets and landmarks would zero in on the occasions in life when you plain and simple messed up. Big time. Royally.
So we could have a little plaque on the swingsets at the park detailing how you, at age seven, pushed little Tommy Burns off of his ass and onto the ground just because you could. Just because it felt awesome to do so. Or we might be able to arrange for a water fountain to bear your name, inscribed in gold, because that was the place where you used to chuck your Budweiser cans and cigarette butts late at night after making out with your high school girlfriend behind the shrubbery. Or in the shrubbery. (Or even, god forbid, with the shrubbery?)
We always dedicate significant civil landmarks to those who have made a difference in the life of the city, the community, by god the world. Why not have little plaques simply to act as placeholders and reminders of how all too often we fuck things up?
The reason I suggest this suggestion, the reason why I bring it up, is because I'm steadily, intermittently polishing off a book by Ian Buruma called Wages of Guilt: Memories of War in Germany and Japan. (The title makes it sound somewhat hideously boring, but it's not.) It's a serious of essays that chronicle how and in what fashion both Germany and Japan have dealt with their wartime legacies. Very interesting to see the similarities and differences between the two cultures. Especially interesting because Cambodia is very much a country that is still grappling with the Khmer Rouge era, still waiting for a trial that may (or may not, I fear) eventually arrive, while Canada is still trying to deal with trading Wayne Gretzky from the Oilers to the L.A. Kings back in '88.
But why should we put all the blame on countries? Countries are not independent of the citizens who compose their censuses. You can't just label this building over here as being 'bad', and that place over there as being the spot where such-and-such atrocity took place.
Let's bring it down to the human level and start with those ignorant folks who always chuck their rubbish where it shouldn't be chucked. We wouldn't have to wait twenty or forty years to collectively feel our guilt; we could subsidize a couple of off-duty security guards to patrol the streets, looking for rubbishers. (And hey, I was a security guard for awhile, and believe me, those boys love being in uniform -- they'd leap at the chance.) Let's grab a five year old who spits his wad of gum onto the crosswalk in front of his school, rub his face in it, draw up a reasonable facsimile of said face, and then post it right on the street. Instant shame and humiliation.
Japan and Germany, China and Cambodia have all contributed hideous atrocities; Canada, too, shoulders much of the blame for the world's ills. (Need I mention Celine Dion, Anne Murray or Alan Thicke?) But at a certain point one has to say: Yes, yes, I fucked up, we fucked up, we're sorry. Let's move on.
It's not easy to move on -- to forgive others their sins, and to forgive ourselves. But we can't walk through life looking back over our shoulder every five minutes, remembering and wallowing in the internal dread of days gone by. We have to tuck it away and refer to it every now and then to keep us humble and aware of our own frailty, rather than keep it looming before us week after week, a constant billboard advertising only our own unspeakable, yet human, regrets.
An entire walkway, road, overpass or avenue devoted to you and you alone, but not to your charitable works, no, nor to that oh-so-memorable time you escorted not one, not two, but an entire cavalcade of little old ladies across the street (at rush hour no less), but, instead, these series of streets and landmarks would zero in on the occasions in life when you plain and simple messed up. Big time. Royally.
So we could have a little plaque on the swingsets at the park detailing how you, at age seven, pushed little Tommy Burns off of his ass and onto the ground just because you could. Just because it felt awesome to do so. Or we might be able to arrange for a water fountain to bear your name, inscribed in gold, because that was the place where you used to chuck your Budweiser cans and cigarette butts late at night after making out with your high school girlfriend behind the shrubbery. Or in the shrubbery. (Or even, god forbid, with the shrubbery?)
We always dedicate significant civil landmarks to those who have made a difference in the life of the city, the community, by god the world. Why not have little plaques simply to act as placeholders and reminders of how all too often we fuck things up?
The reason I suggest this suggestion, the reason why I bring it up, is because I'm steadily, intermittently polishing off a book by Ian Buruma called Wages of Guilt: Memories of War in Germany and Japan. (The title makes it sound somewhat hideously boring, but it's not.) It's a serious of essays that chronicle how and in what fashion both Germany and Japan have dealt with their wartime legacies. Very interesting to see the similarities and differences between the two cultures. Especially interesting because Cambodia is very much a country that is still grappling with the Khmer Rouge era, still waiting for a trial that may (or may not, I fear) eventually arrive, while Canada is still trying to deal with trading Wayne Gretzky from the Oilers to the L.A. Kings back in '88.
But why should we put all the blame on countries? Countries are not independent of the citizens who compose their censuses. You can't just label this building over here as being 'bad', and that place over there as being the spot where such-and-such atrocity took place.
Let's bring it down to the human level and start with those ignorant folks who always chuck their rubbish where it shouldn't be chucked. We wouldn't have to wait twenty or forty years to collectively feel our guilt; we could subsidize a couple of off-duty security guards to patrol the streets, looking for rubbishers. (And hey, I was a security guard for awhile, and believe me, those boys love being in uniform -- they'd leap at the chance.) Let's grab a five year old who spits his wad of gum onto the crosswalk in front of his school, rub his face in it, draw up a reasonable facsimile of said face, and then post it right on the street. Instant shame and humiliation.
Japan and Germany, China and Cambodia have all contributed hideous atrocities; Canada, too, shoulders much of the blame for the world's ills. (Need I mention Celine Dion, Anne Murray or Alan Thicke?) But at a certain point one has to say: Yes, yes, I fucked up, we fucked up, we're sorry. Let's move on.
It's not easy to move on -- to forgive others their sins, and to forgive ourselves. But we can't walk through life looking back over our shoulder every five minutes, remembering and wallowing in the internal dread of days gone by. We have to tuck it away and refer to it every now and then to keep us humble and aware of our own frailty, rather than keep it looming before us week after week, a constant billboard advertising only our own unspeakable, yet human, regrets.
Sunday, May 08, 2005
START THE MOVIE, ALREADY! or, THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING OF THE WESTERN SOUL
For some reason or another I always seem to be restlessly scanning the Internet and devouring the newspapers for interesting or enlightening or even absurd topics to write about and think about, so my mind is always making arbitrary connections that I unreasonably demand achieve some sort of thematic synthesis. This week I found two interesting (?) tidbits:
1) Cambodia is now the tenth worst country in the entire world for women and children to live in. It made the bottom ten. Woo-hoo!
2) Some newspapers in New York are now showing the actual start times of movies, instead of the nominal times, meaning they will tell you that the flick starts at 9:00, yes, but it really starts at 9:23, when you subtract the multiple commercials and trailers that they usually require you to sit through. (Full disclosure: I'm not sure if I used the word 'nominal' correctly in the above sentence. Just had to let you know that.)
What strikes me is simply the, I don't know, gap that exists between those two factoids of information.
In Cambodia, the majority of people don't even have healthy drinking water. They don't have proper medicine. They don't have jacksquat. Most folks here live in tiny villages where the infant mortality rate is disgustingly, astonishingly high. (And, as someone much smarter than me pointed out, think about what that does to a small community, to have a significant portion of newborns die on a regular basis. Think what that ambience of death adds to a neighbourhood. Think of the hope and dread intertwined on a weekly basis.)
And then we can contrast that with the western world, where people are so pissed off at sitting through stupid previews and idiotic commercials that they've got fed up with it all and demanded that they know when the actual movie starts, goddamnit it all.
Now, don't get me wrong. (Wow, what a weird phrase that is -- ' don't get me wrong'. We never say 'get me right', do we? So, I'll try and stop saying it in the future.) I think it's a good idea to list the real show-times in the paper; I'm all for it. It's convenient and considerate for all consumers.
It's just...
It has something to do with our ever-rising scale of expectations. (And by 'our' I'm referring to humans, although I'm sure it's probably the same for Vulcans, Klingons, possibly even hobbits.) We get water, and then want something sweeter, so we make Coke. We get Coke, and then we realize that all that sugar is not that good for us, so we make Diet Coke. We get grain and rice, and then we realize that that's not all that delicious, so we invent pizza and hot fudge sundaes. We get movie theatres, and then we get pissed off that we actually have to sit through an entire fifteen minutes of product placement.
I don't know if it's healthy or scary to want more, more, more. It's a human instinct, of that I'm sure, but this escalation of desire can become somewhat startling if you ponder it too much.
Last week I was at my old school, talking to one of my old students, one of my first students, a monk. Nice guy. About to graduate with his degree. Will probably stay on as a monk, though, because he likes it, likes the spiritual discipline, even though it's hard. Two meals a day, both before the advent of the afternoon. No alcohol. This dude has nothing but the robes on his back and the knowledge and his head, but he seems happy and content. He's learning. I jokingly said to him that I'm feeling old, being almost thirty, and he smiled and remarked that he was older than me, almost thirty-four, I think he said. And then I remembered that the life expectancy for Cambodians is only, like, 52 or something. So, theoretically, if he follows the norm, he would be eighteen years from death. (It's like me being already sixty or something.)
So, I don't know. Perhaps I'm overdramatizing things. Perhaps my tangents are remaining unconnected.
But it seems that we worry about the small things too much -- the movie times and the start time and which Idol judge is sleeping with which contestant. (I think Paula is probably guilty, by the way.) We sometimes allow those minor slices of life to all too often become the content of life. We let them add up to something that is even smaller than the sum of its parts. And I think we become somehow smaller, too.
1) Cambodia is now the tenth worst country in the entire world for women and children to live in. It made the bottom ten. Woo-hoo!
2) Some newspapers in New York are now showing the actual start times of movies, instead of the nominal times, meaning they will tell you that the flick starts at 9:00, yes, but it really starts at 9:23, when you subtract the multiple commercials and trailers that they usually require you to sit through. (Full disclosure: I'm not sure if I used the word 'nominal' correctly in the above sentence. Just had to let you know that.)
What strikes me is simply the, I don't know, gap that exists between those two factoids of information.
In Cambodia, the majority of people don't even have healthy drinking water. They don't have proper medicine. They don't have jacksquat. Most folks here live in tiny villages where the infant mortality rate is disgustingly, astonishingly high. (And, as someone much smarter than me pointed out, think about what that does to a small community, to have a significant portion of newborns die on a regular basis. Think what that ambience of death adds to a neighbourhood. Think of the hope and dread intertwined on a weekly basis.)
And then we can contrast that with the western world, where people are so pissed off at sitting through stupid previews and idiotic commercials that they've got fed up with it all and demanded that they know when the actual movie starts, goddamnit it all.
Now, don't get me wrong. (Wow, what a weird phrase that is -- ' don't get me wrong'. We never say 'get me right', do we? So, I'll try and stop saying it in the future.) I think it's a good idea to list the real show-times in the paper; I'm all for it. It's convenient and considerate for all consumers.
It's just...
It has something to do with our ever-rising scale of expectations. (And by 'our' I'm referring to humans, although I'm sure it's probably the same for Vulcans, Klingons, possibly even hobbits.) We get water, and then want something sweeter, so we make Coke. We get Coke, and then we realize that all that sugar is not that good for us, so we make Diet Coke. We get grain and rice, and then we realize that that's not all that delicious, so we invent pizza and hot fudge sundaes. We get movie theatres, and then we get pissed off that we actually have to sit through an entire fifteen minutes of product placement.
I don't know if it's healthy or scary to want more, more, more. It's a human instinct, of that I'm sure, but this escalation of desire can become somewhat startling if you ponder it too much.
Last week I was at my old school, talking to one of my old students, one of my first students, a monk. Nice guy. About to graduate with his degree. Will probably stay on as a monk, though, because he likes it, likes the spiritual discipline, even though it's hard. Two meals a day, both before the advent of the afternoon. No alcohol. This dude has nothing but the robes on his back and the knowledge and his head, but he seems happy and content. He's learning. I jokingly said to him that I'm feeling old, being almost thirty, and he smiled and remarked that he was older than me, almost thirty-four, I think he said. And then I remembered that the life expectancy for Cambodians is only, like, 52 or something. So, theoretically, if he follows the norm, he would be eighteen years from death. (It's like me being already sixty or something.)
So, I don't know. Perhaps I'm overdramatizing things. Perhaps my tangents are remaining unconnected.
But it seems that we worry about the small things too much -- the movie times and the start time and which Idol judge is sleeping with which contestant. (I think Paula is probably guilty, by the way.) We sometimes allow those minor slices of life to all too often become the content of life. We let them add up to something that is even smaller than the sum of its parts. And I think we become somehow smaller, too.
Saturday, May 07, 2005
THE OLD I'M-A-MEMBER-OF-CONDOLEEZA-RICE'S-SECURITY-TEAM-AND-THEN-I'M-RESEMBLING-A-GEORGE-ROMERO-ZOMBIE DREAM, THE KIND WE ALL HAVE (UM, RIGHT?)
I had a dream the other night that was probably similar to one you all have had before. I was Condeleeza Rice's assistant, following her through the cobblestone streets of some unknown European capital, and suddenly ten, fifteen, twenty secret service agents popped out of nowhere, shrouding her body and protecting her from a series of skyrocketing bombs that had erupted seemingly at once from air, land and sea. It was all a drill, of course, and I knew that, understood that, but still, I felt that, as a member of her security detail (albeit a novice member and a Canadian member to boot, true, I understand that, but still), I should have been at least notified in advance as to the logisitics of this particular security demonstration. Then the scene shifted, as dreams tend to do, and I was standing in front of my mirror, and my right eye was puffed up the same way it's been the two times I've been bitten by a bug here in Cambodia. And my left eye was completely white -- there was no pupil, and it looked like my eyeball was composed of white chocolate with pin-prick sized holes dotting its ablino landscape. Then I woke up.
I'm sure you've all had that same dream before.
It can't be just me, can it?
I'm sure you've all had that same dream before.
It can't be just me, can it?
WRITING AND READING: FRIENDS WITH BENEFITS
I like having written, not writing.
-- Anonymous
Writers write to read what they've written.
-- Susan Sontag,
novelist, literary critic
The more I read and the more I write the more I realize that reading and writing have very little, if anything, in common.
Let me be more precise. They have everything in common, of course, but that commonality masks the fundamental dichotomy that exists between what we read and what we write. The two acts are not mutually exclusive, no, but neither are they long-term bed-buddies. At best, they're good friends who occasionally sleep with each other.
Or I'll put it like this: The sentence I'm currently typing, the one that you're presently reading, for me, is an organic, developing thing, the end of which I'm only discovering right about now. For you, that previous sentence (and this one) is an existing artifact; it is there, and it is finite, and it has a beginning and an end that you can trace and delineate. For me, that sentence was alive as I wrote it. As soon as I finished typing it, the words became inert. Not lifeless, no, because whatever life they had was resuscitated by you, the reader. Myself, as writer, was the one who gave it birth, while you, as reader, were the one who performed electroshock therapy on the sentence. There's a difference -- a subtle one, but people who read a lot and write a lot may be able to recognize it.
Writing is electric and kinetic. The words come out of your brain and into your fingertips, and you are forced to control the sentence in a such a way that its ultimate destination somehow matches what you originally had in mind when you began the journey. Writing is impulsive and somewhat unwieldy; even revision, that process of making sure your thoughts and concepts make some kind of sensible sense, has its own somewhat skewed logic. We backspace and delete and erase and start again; we kill our darlings again and again, as per Hemingway's advice.
Reading, though, is an altogether tamer beast. The words and sentences are there before us, in neat, ordered columns, in paragraphs that are discrete and diligently austere. The writer has done his work and called it a day, and now we, the reader, have to complete the circle of conception. If the editor is a midwife, then the reader is the expectant father pacing the lobby who finally gets to hold the kid in his arms. (Even if said kid is not his own, we can still love the child nevertheless.)
I think I would take exception to the quotes that began this post, because I prefer writing something to reading what I've written. I prefer the act of creating itself, when everything is still possible, when anything is still possible, to the inevitably dispiriting aftermath, when what we meant to say, needed to say, longed to say, has been inadequately translated into words.
Writers write, I think, to engage in the torturous, wondrous process of conception. I think Michael Jordan would rather have played a hard-fought and bitterly contested game of basketball than to have reveled in the score afterwards, and as much as I enjoy that glorious moment of a run when I can finally stop and my feet can stop moving, I have to admit that it is the process itself, the pain itself, that is the ultimate attraction.
The afterglow may be sweeter, yes, but who said sweet things were, in the end, more fulfilling or nutritious?
It's the doing that counts; it's the doing that tells us who we are, for better or for worse. Writing may not be as fun as reading, no, but neither is attaining your bachelor's degree as fun as shooting down a waterslide. I think part of growing up is recognizing that the tough stuff, the real stuff, is the stuff that endures, molds and allows us to become greater than ourselves.
-- Anonymous
Writers write to read what they've written.
-- Susan Sontag,
novelist, literary critic
The more I read and the more I write the more I realize that reading and writing have very little, if anything, in common.
Let me be more precise. They have everything in common, of course, but that commonality masks the fundamental dichotomy that exists between what we read and what we write. The two acts are not mutually exclusive, no, but neither are they long-term bed-buddies. At best, they're good friends who occasionally sleep with each other.
Or I'll put it like this: The sentence I'm currently typing, the one that you're presently reading, for me, is an organic, developing thing, the end of which I'm only discovering right about now. For you, that previous sentence (and this one) is an existing artifact; it is there, and it is finite, and it has a beginning and an end that you can trace and delineate. For me, that sentence was alive as I wrote it. As soon as I finished typing it, the words became inert. Not lifeless, no, because whatever life they had was resuscitated by you, the reader. Myself, as writer, was the one who gave it birth, while you, as reader, were the one who performed electroshock therapy on the sentence. There's a difference -- a subtle one, but people who read a lot and write a lot may be able to recognize it.
Writing is electric and kinetic. The words come out of your brain and into your fingertips, and you are forced to control the sentence in a such a way that its ultimate destination somehow matches what you originally had in mind when you began the journey. Writing is impulsive and somewhat unwieldy; even revision, that process of making sure your thoughts and concepts make some kind of sensible sense, has its own somewhat skewed logic. We backspace and delete and erase and start again; we kill our darlings again and again, as per Hemingway's advice.
Reading, though, is an altogether tamer beast. The words and sentences are there before us, in neat, ordered columns, in paragraphs that are discrete and diligently austere. The writer has done his work and called it a day, and now we, the reader, have to complete the circle of conception. If the editor is a midwife, then the reader is the expectant father pacing the lobby who finally gets to hold the kid in his arms. (Even if said kid is not his own, we can still love the child nevertheless.)
I think I would take exception to the quotes that began this post, because I prefer writing something to reading what I've written. I prefer the act of creating itself, when everything is still possible, when anything is still possible, to the inevitably dispiriting aftermath, when what we meant to say, needed to say, longed to say, has been inadequately translated into words.
Writers write, I think, to engage in the torturous, wondrous process of conception. I think Michael Jordan would rather have played a hard-fought and bitterly contested game of basketball than to have reveled in the score afterwards, and as much as I enjoy that glorious moment of a run when I can finally stop and my feet can stop moving, I have to admit that it is the process itself, the pain itself, that is the ultimate attraction.
The afterglow may be sweeter, yes, but who said sweet things were, in the end, more fulfilling or nutritious?
It's the doing that counts; it's the doing that tells us who we are, for better or for worse. Writing may not be as fun as reading, no, but neither is attaining your bachelor's degree as fun as shooting down a waterslide. I think part of growing up is recognizing that the tough stuff, the real stuff, is the stuff that endures, molds and allows us to become greater than ourselves.
Thursday, May 05, 2005
MICHAEL KEATON AS THE DARK KNIGHT MAY VERY WELL HAVE BEEN ON TO SOMETHING, GIVEN THAT OUR FUTURE SELVES UNDERSTAND THE CONFUSION WE CONTINUALLY FEEL
Everything around me and within me has suddenly taken on a heightened clarity, as if the normal sunshine, the usual heat, my everday thoughts, have become fuller and stranger and equipped with their own special form of almost supernatural logic and grace. Perhaps it's because I feel change in the air, almost literally, as the heat gets stronger, more confident, and the dark clouds continue to tantalizingly hint at rain. Or it may because so much is changing (possibly), and stability is fragile (potentially). Where I will be two months from now is not altogether clear: possibly here, perhaps there. Where I will go is open.
It's that openness that is scary, isn't it? Frightening and necessary, somehow -- at least for me, and maybe sometimes for you, too. When things are open you can go any which way but loose, to quote an old Clint Eastwood movie. You can drift somewhere and come ashore on a strange or familiar beach, depending on the wind.
Or maybe it's like that scene in the original BATMAN flick, where Michael Keaton is trying to find the words to explain to Kim Basinger that he is, in fact, the Dark Knight.
"You know how other people have jobs, and they get up in the morning and brush their tooth and come downstairs and have something to eat and kiss somebody goodbye," he says, realizing that words are failing him. He's trying to describe what a normal life is compared to his abnormal one.
Sometimes I feel that way. (And sometimes you do, too, I'm sure.) Even if you DO have a life that includes getting up and coming downstairs and grabbing something to eat and kissing somebody goodbye before you carpool to work, there is always a nagging feeling within us that wants to go another octave beyond a nag and into a roar. The source and content of its ferocious message isn't always clear, but I have my suspicions.
Assuming that life is not a random series of unfortunate events (and that's a big assumption), then perhaps not only the 'me' of now is the captain of my ship but the 'me' of later, too. The 'me' who is forty, fifty, even sixty could be calling the shots. Incarnations of my later self (selves?) could be sending back through time appropriate psychic messages that help me make the big decisions, the tough decisions.
Or perhaps these later selves of mine also have some sway in the temporal and logistic shifting of reality itself; perhaps they are nudging people this way and that way, making room for me, allowing me to find the path that is meant for me and me alone. (These later selves know how hard it is, because they, of course, went through the same experiences.)
In other words, our lives are a loop -- the past selves inform our present selves, we know that, Dr.Phil told us so, and so who's to say that our future selves can't exist in a parallel dimension of time and space? Who's to say that our future isn't as prominent and potent as our present? If time is an illusion, a concept I suspect and endorse as being true, then it makes sense that the loop of life will be bookended by our later selves, who, of course, will want to make our rides as comfortable as possible.
So:
The stability of life and the constant things in life are constantly being upended. Check. Got that. But this is all part of a larger process, a cyclical process, whereby who we are decades hence somehow cosmically influences who we are at the present moment in time. The heat and the wind and the feelings in my gut are mysteriously coded signals, all of them, from future versions of Scott, hopefully wiser versions of Scott.
I'm down with that.
Such notions, bizarre as they seem, may not seem credible, no, but they allow the morning sun, the drifting clouds, the instincts we dismiss and discard to have a rhythm and a pattern and a balance that approach something almost musical in their serenity and intent.
It's that openness that is scary, isn't it? Frightening and necessary, somehow -- at least for me, and maybe sometimes for you, too. When things are open you can go any which way but loose, to quote an old Clint Eastwood movie. You can drift somewhere and come ashore on a strange or familiar beach, depending on the wind.
Or maybe it's like that scene in the original BATMAN flick, where Michael Keaton is trying to find the words to explain to Kim Basinger that he is, in fact, the Dark Knight.
"You know how other people have jobs, and they get up in the morning and brush their tooth and come downstairs and have something to eat and kiss somebody goodbye," he says, realizing that words are failing him. He's trying to describe what a normal life is compared to his abnormal one.
Sometimes I feel that way. (And sometimes you do, too, I'm sure.) Even if you DO have a life that includes getting up and coming downstairs and grabbing something to eat and kissing somebody goodbye before you carpool to work, there is always a nagging feeling within us that wants to go another octave beyond a nag and into a roar. The source and content of its ferocious message isn't always clear, but I have my suspicions.
Assuming that life is not a random series of unfortunate events (and that's a big assumption), then perhaps not only the 'me' of now is the captain of my ship but the 'me' of later, too. The 'me' who is forty, fifty, even sixty could be calling the shots. Incarnations of my later self (selves?) could be sending back through time appropriate psychic messages that help me make the big decisions, the tough decisions.
Or perhaps these later selves of mine also have some sway in the temporal and logistic shifting of reality itself; perhaps they are nudging people this way and that way, making room for me, allowing me to find the path that is meant for me and me alone. (These later selves know how hard it is, because they, of course, went through the same experiences.)
In other words, our lives are a loop -- the past selves inform our present selves, we know that, Dr.Phil told us so, and so who's to say that our future selves can't exist in a parallel dimension of time and space? Who's to say that our future isn't as prominent and potent as our present? If time is an illusion, a concept I suspect and endorse as being true, then it makes sense that the loop of life will be bookended by our later selves, who, of course, will want to make our rides as comfortable as possible.
So:
The stability of life and the constant things in life are constantly being upended. Check. Got that. But this is all part of a larger process, a cyclical process, whereby who we are decades hence somehow cosmically influences who we are at the present moment in time. The heat and the wind and the feelings in my gut are mysteriously coded signals, all of them, from future versions of Scott, hopefully wiser versions of Scott.
I'm down with that.
Such notions, bizarre as they seem, may not seem credible, no, but they allow the morning sun, the drifting clouds, the instincts we dismiss and discard to have a rhythm and a pattern and a balance that approach something almost musical in their serenity and intent.
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