Well, Red O turned out to be about as expected--a good restaurant with moments of greatness. The 'scene' of the place was at least half the attraction, but the food wasn't bad. Two dishes stood out--a pork mole sopes which had a depth and complexity of flavor I've never experienced before eating mole, and a roast pork shoulder in ancho sauce. The other dishes ranged from average (duck taquitos) to very good (beef salad with beets).
Every month or so the list of new books I want to read builds to a breaking point, and I get on amazon and go a little crazy. That happened yesterday. Now I've got eight or nine books en route, which means I need to finish Crime and Punishment (and, ideally, The Winter's Tale, which I've been slowly slowly rereading over the past month) in the next few days.
Luzhin, Dunya's vain, pompous and conniving suitor is for sure one of C& P's best characters. His attempt to frame Sonya for the theft of a hundred rubles in order to awaken doubt in Dunya about her brother's friends is a masterstroke, plot-wise. [What a terrible sentence structure. X is a Y, something-wise. Nothing should ever be "something-wise."]
Where was I?
Oh, an unrelated thought. Maybe the reason I disliked The Idiot so much when I read it (in 2003?) was because it had more women in it. Dostoevsky seems to me not all that great at writing female characters. They all skew towards a couple of predictable types, none of which are as interesting as his men. Well, that's only a thesis. I don't have enough familiarity with his work to feel confident in that claim. But, it seems possible. And it would explain one of the reasons why Crime is so successful; it's so much about men, the gender D knew how to write.
Thursday, March 24, 2011
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
Day 17
Crime and Punishment going well, revealing its greatness to me finally.
If there is one word that could be used in almost any scene in any novel by Dostoevsky to describe the characters, it is 'irritable.' People are either irritable or irritated ALL the time.
Ended up watching the first thirty minutes of Soderbergh's "The Girlfriend Experience" last night. Movie became a minor cause celebre at the time it was released because of Soderbergh's decision to use a porn star (Sasha Gray) for leading role of a high end Manhattan escort. I had low expectations for movie, having seen Gray in the last season of Entourage (where she was fairly horrible). However, the movie (at least its beginning) seemed highly promising. I was disappointed to have to go to bed; hopefully I'll finish it soon.
Wife's birthday is today (Happy Birthday, Sweetie!) To celebrate, we're going to Red O, a much ballyhooed new Mexican restaurant recently opened by star chef Rick Bayless. To get a reservation I had to call in February. Should be interesting; if the food doesn't live up to its near-ecstatic reviews, at least the experience should be intriguing. I'll try to write about it tomorrow.
If there is one word that could be used in almost any scene in any novel by Dostoevsky to describe the characters, it is 'irritable.' People are either irritable or irritated ALL the time.
Ended up watching the first thirty minutes of Soderbergh's "The Girlfriend Experience" last night. Movie became a minor cause celebre at the time it was released because of Soderbergh's decision to use a porn star (Sasha Gray) for leading role of a high end Manhattan escort. I had low expectations for movie, having seen Gray in the last season of Entourage (where she was fairly horrible). However, the movie (at least its beginning) seemed highly promising. I was disappointed to have to go to bed; hopefully I'll finish it soon.
Wife's birthday is today (Happy Birthday, Sweetie!) To celebrate, we're going to Red O, a much ballyhooed new Mexican restaurant recently opened by star chef Rick Bayless. To get a reservation I had to call in February. Should be interesting; if the food doesn't live up to its near-ecstatic reviews, at least the experience should be intriguing. I'll try to write about it tomorrow.
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
Day 16
Yesterday's rambling jeremiad having occasioned no response, I leave off the subject of art and craft for the mundane subjects which define our day to day lives.
I woke up in the middle of the night riven by anxiety. About what? About everything. Tried to solve problems in play in head, but that didn't help. Four hours later, I fell into a weird sleep. Dreamed I was invited to help do rewrite on schlock sci-fi screenplay for low budget movie being produced by my boss at tutoring company and Matthew Broderick. Dream consisted of me sitting silently through long meeting with members of movie team. Meeting took place at a building somewhere on the campus of Harvard. Woke up at 10 to loud howling. The cat had crossed onto our porch, I assume, an offense Bink cannot and will not forgive (despite its happening eight times a day).
I haven't been reading enough for the last few days. I left off doing a page a day of the Paradisio (as Dante gets higher in the heavens, it gets both more difficult and less entertaining. And it wasn't that entertaining from the start) for Crime and Punishment, a book I disliked immensely the last time I read it, in college. This time around I'm finding much in it to appreciate. I've never cared much for Dostoevsky, but this experience is making me reconsider. Should I try and reread The Brothers Karamazov? That would be a project. We'll see.
Review of new Geoff Dyer book (a collection of short pieces and reviews) in New York Times piqued my interest. Among the pieces described was one about touring with the 50 year-old members of Def Leppard. That sounds pretty great. Maybe I'll read it.
Okay, muffins in the oven (I now make low fat blueberry muffins twice a week, since they're a great, non hypoglycemia inducing snack). Have to go attend to them.
I woke up in the middle of the night riven by anxiety. About what? About everything. Tried to solve problems in play in head, but that didn't help. Four hours later, I fell into a weird sleep. Dreamed I was invited to help do rewrite on schlock sci-fi screenplay for low budget movie being produced by my boss at tutoring company and Matthew Broderick. Dream consisted of me sitting silently through long meeting with members of movie team. Meeting took place at a building somewhere on the campus of Harvard. Woke up at 10 to loud howling. The cat had crossed onto our porch, I assume, an offense Bink cannot and will not forgive (despite its happening eight times a day).
I haven't been reading enough for the last few days. I left off doing a page a day of the Paradisio (as Dante gets higher in the heavens, it gets both more difficult and less entertaining. And it wasn't that entertaining from the start) for Crime and Punishment, a book I disliked immensely the last time I read it, in college. This time around I'm finding much in it to appreciate. I've never cared much for Dostoevsky, but this experience is making me reconsider. Should I try and reread The Brothers Karamazov? That would be a project. We'll see.
Review of new Geoff Dyer book (a collection of short pieces and reviews) in New York Times piqued my interest. Among the pieces described was one about touring with the 50 year-old members of Def Leppard. That sounds pretty great. Maybe I'll read it.
Okay, muffins in the oven (I now make low fat blueberry muffins twice a week, since they're a great, non hypoglycemia inducing snack). Have to go attend to them.
Monday, March 21, 2011
Day 15
It seems as if my attempts at a daily journal of my life (which is admittedly mundane) is being transformed into a daily journal of aesthetic theory. Which is fine with me....
Subjectivity Vs Objectivity in Art
This has come up in recent posts, and it's something I want to talk about.
I ran into this issue a lot teaching creative writing--often after a student poem was critiqued. The class would offer its feedback and the author would respond with something along the lines of "well, that's great, but that's just your opinion. I like this, and that's really all that matters." The assumption was: art is subjective, and therefore our comments about how to 'improve' the poem were of slight use, at best. Some people like chocolate, some people like vanilla and that's all there is to it. De gustibus non dispantdum.
But this attitude reveals a fundamental mistake. Just because art is not purely objective doesn't mean it's purely subjective. To put it another way, it's one thing to compare chocolate ice cream to vanilla; it's another thing to compare chocolate ice cream to burnt plastic. No, I can't prove that Auden's "In Memoriam of W.B. Yeats" is 'better' than "Random Poem" by John Q Smith. But that doesn't mean the two poems truly really do possess the same artistic power. I.e. just because one is not objectively better than the other doesn't mean it isn't better. And if a reader comes along and insists they truly prefer John Q Smith's "Random Poem", it's reasonable to assume they haven't spend much time reading poetry or didn't read either poem very closely (or, maybe, are being willfully perverse). We might all have our private canons, and I appreciate that within those canon it's hard to say if Emily Dickinson is 'better' than Walt Whitman. (THAT is a chocolate vs. vanilla type distinction). More than that it's probably not meaningful, since our ideas of 'better' are going to dovetail with what we think poetry SHOULD do, and probably we all have slightly different of what poetry is and should be. (Obviously for 'poetry' here we could insert 'movies' or 'novels' or whatever). However, just because we all have slightly different ideas of what poetry should be doesn't mean we have to descend into a realm of pure subjectivity. If you go out and interview 5000 people who read poetry with any frequency and ask them to compare "The Lovesong of J Alfred Prufrock" with "Random Poem" by John Smith, I'd guess that close to all of them will tell you "Lovesong" is a better poem. We all of us share certain assumptions about what a poem or a novel should be, and certain works fulfill those assumptions more perfectly than others. Yes, assumptions change (as do canons of artistic taste), and are challenged and occasionally temporarily collapsed (as by Dada, Art Brut, etc). But again, just because a thing can't be known with complete objectivity doesn't mean it can't be known at all.
So what if I come along and say I LOVE Random Poem, you ask? Surely you're not saying that means I'm WRONG. Well, yes, I am. Insofar as taste can be wrong, you are. Taste has to be developed, it has to be worked at. (This is why, at least in theory, some people are qualified to be critics. They have developed their taste to a higher acuity than most others). This is perhaps not a fashionable thing to say, but I think it's true. This is why most serious readers go back to books even if they didn't like them on first reading. If ten people who I respect as readers all assure me that The Idiot is a great book, my assumption on finishing The Idiot and hating it is NOT: those people were all wrong. It's that I missed it. And nine times out of ten, when I wait a year or two and go back to it, I find that the artwork that I didn't like at first has now begun to let me into its pleasures. There's a whole list of writers and visual artists that I still haven't been able to bring myself to like very much or deeply, to which I keep returning, every few years, in the hope that I will eventually 'get them.' (This list includes, among others, Cezanne, Cervantes, Montaigne, Raphael, and Faulkner.) In their essence, this is what English classes are (or should) be about; trying to teach students to develop an appreciation for artists that they might not otherwise, trying to give them a way in to pleasures they might not otherwise be able to access.
Now of course it could be said: well what's the point? I genuinely LIKE "Random Poem" even though you tell me that "Prufrock" is much better. What's wrong with that? And more to the point, why in the world should I spend hours rereading and studying "Prufrock" just so I can obtain from it the pleasure that I already find in "Random Poem", which I didn't have to work at at all?
The short answer is: pleasure. All art at its core is about pleasure. It's a high form of pleasure, but it's pleasure nonetheless (although, since I would argue the highest pleasure comes from learning, and since the best art can teach, it's not a negligible thing, that pleasure.)
Where was I?
Oh: pleasure. The long and short of it.... the reason it's worth fighting to appreciate Dante or Proust or whatever is because the pleasure available within those works is greater, deeper, richer, more profound, than any pleasure you can obtain elsewhere (within the world of art). THIS is why "Random Poem" is not as 'great' as "Prufrock" and THIS is why it's worth spending the time to 'learn to appreciate'--to access the pleasures contained within--art which might at first resist us.
And there are all sorts of ways to do this, and that's a subject for another post. Although, randomly, I just thought of the critical exposition featured as 'extras' on the DVD of La Regle De Jeu (Rules of the Game) which made me appreciate that movie about 100 times more than I did previously and helped to convince me that it is, in fact, the greatest (or one of) movie ever made.
* * *
And I will write about this later, because now the housekeeper is here and the Binks has gone INSANE. A situation to manage....
* * *
Ok, Binks at Doggy DayCare. I have to work on my play; this is a subject I could write about for another hour. I know the stuff above is somewhat scattered; I'm not working on a coherent essay so much as trying to sketch out some of my thoughts. I'll keep posting on this, I guess, since it seems to have excited some interest.
Oh, and to make a clarification: I never intended, at any point, to suggest that "Craft" is something insignificant. Well-crafted work is absolutely worth our time, and since I think art generally tends to exhaust one emotionally, while craft does not, I spend a lot more time experiencing craft than I do art. I've seen 80% of the Coen's movies, and I absolutely admire their work. I think they're something's missing though, something that keeps them from greatness. There's a cruelty throughout their movies, a lack of empathy, a tendency to view human beings as if we were specimens being manipulated by super intelligent aliens. But all that's not to say I don't make it a point to see their movies: I do. They're inevitably better than 95% of what's out there.
* * *
That Engineers album I mentioned a few posts ago, by the way: Keeps getting better. Absolutely worth buying.
Subjectivity Vs Objectivity in Art
This has come up in recent posts, and it's something I want to talk about.
I ran into this issue a lot teaching creative writing--often after a student poem was critiqued. The class would offer its feedback and the author would respond with something along the lines of "well, that's great, but that's just your opinion. I like this, and that's really all that matters." The assumption was: art is subjective, and therefore our comments about how to 'improve' the poem were of slight use, at best. Some people like chocolate, some people like vanilla and that's all there is to it. De gustibus non dispantdum.
But this attitude reveals a fundamental mistake. Just because art is not purely objective doesn't mean it's purely subjective. To put it another way, it's one thing to compare chocolate ice cream to vanilla; it's another thing to compare chocolate ice cream to burnt plastic. No, I can't prove that Auden's "In Memoriam of W.B. Yeats" is 'better' than "Random Poem" by John Q Smith. But that doesn't mean the two poems truly really do possess the same artistic power. I.e. just because one is not objectively better than the other doesn't mean it isn't better. And if a reader comes along and insists they truly prefer John Q Smith's "Random Poem", it's reasonable to assume they haven't spend much time reading poetry or didn't read either poem very closely (or, maybe, are being willfully perverse). We might all have our private canons, and I appreciate that within those canon it's hard to say if Emily Dickinson is 'better' than Walt Whitman. (THAT is a chocolate vs. vanilla type distinction). More than that it's probably not meaningful, since our ideas of 'better' are going to dovetail with what we think poetry SHOULD do, and probably we all have slightly different of what poetry is and should be. (Obviously for 'poetry' here we could insert 'movies' or 'novels' or whatever). However, just because we all have slightly different ideas of what poetry should be doesn't mean we have to descend into a realm of pure subjectivity. If you go out and interview 5000 people who read poetry with any frequency and ask them to compare "The Lovesong of J Alfred Prufrock" with "Random Poem" by John Smith, I'd guess that close to all of them will tell you "Lovesong" is a better poem. We all of us share certain assumptions about what a poem or a novel should be, and certain works fulfill those assumptions more perfectly than others. Yes, assumptions change (as do canons of artistic taste), and are challenged and occasionally temporarily collapsed (as by Dada, Art Brut, etc). But again, just because a thing can't be known with complete objectivity doesn't mean it can't be known at all.
So what if I come along and say I LOVE Random Poem, you ask? Surely you're not saying that means I'm WRONG. Well, yes, I am. Insofar as taste can be wrong, you are. Taste has to be developed, it has to be worked at. (This is why, at least in theory, some people are qualified to be critics. They have developed their taste to a higher acuity than most others). This is perhaps not a fashionable thing to say, but I think it's true. This is why most serious readers go back to books even if they didn't like them on first reading. If ten people who I respect as readers all assure me that The Idiot is a great book, my assumption on finishing The Idiot and hating it is NOT: those people were all wrong. It's that I missed it. And nine times out of ten, when I wait a year or two and go back to it, I find that the artwork that I didn't like at first has now begun to let me into its pleasures. There's a whole list of writers and visual artists that I still haven't been able to bring myself to like very much or deeply, to which I keep returning, every few years, in the hope that I will eventually 'get them.' (This list includes, among others, Cezanne, Cervantes, Montaigne, Raphael, and Faulkner.) In their essence, this is what English classes are (or should) be about; trying to teach students to develop an appreciation for artists that they might not otherwise, trying to give them a way in to pleasures they might not otherwise be able to access.
Now of course it could be said: well what's the point? I genuinely LIKE "Random Poem" even though you tell me that "Prufrock" is much better. What's wrong with that? And more to the point, why in the world should I spend hours rereading and studying "Prufrock" just so I can obtain from it the pleasure that I already find in "Random Poem", which I didn't have to work at at all?
The short answer is: pleasure. All art at its core is about pleasure. It's a high form of pleasure, but it's pleasure nonetheless (although, since I would argue the highest pleasure comes from learning, and since the best art can teach, it's not a negligible thing, that pleasure.)
Where was I?
Oh: pleasure. The long and short of it.... the reason it's worth fighting to appreciate Dante or Proust or whatever is because the pleasure available within those works is greater, deeper, richer, more profound, than any pleasure you can obtain elsewhere (within the world of art). THIS is why "Random Poem" is not as 'great' as "Prufrock" and THIS is why it's worth spending the time to 'learn to appreciate'--to access the pleasures contained within--art which might at first resist us.
And there are all sorts of ways to do this, and that's a subject for another post. Although, randomly, I just thought of the critical exposition featured as 'extras' on the DVD of La Regle De Jeu (Rules of the Game) which made me appreciate that movie about 100 times more than I did previously and helped to convince me that it is, in fact, the greatest (or one of) movie ever made.
* * *
And I will write about this later, because now the housekeeper is here and the Binks has gone INSANE. A situation to manage....
* * *
Ok, Binks at Doggy DayCare. I have to work on my play; this is a subject I could write about for another hour. I know the stuff above is somewhat scattered; I'm not working on a coherent essay so much as trying to sketch out some of my thoughts. I'll keep posting on this, I guess, since it seems to have excited some interest.
Oh, and to make a clarification: I never intended, at any point, to suggest that "Craft" is something insignificant. Well-crafted work is absolutely worth our time, and since I think art generally tends to exhaust one emotionally, while craft does not, I spend a lot more time experiencing craft than I do art. I've seen 80% of the Coen's movies, and I absolutely admire their work. I think they're something's missing though, something that keeps them from greatness. There's a cruelty throughout their movies, a lack of empathy, a tendency to view human beings as if we were specimens being manipulated by super intelligent aliens. But all that's not to say I don't make it a point to see their movies: I do. They're inevitably better than 95% of what's out there.
* * *
That Engineers album I mentioned a few posts ago, by the way: Keeps getting better. Absolutely worth buying.
Sunday, March 20, 2011
Day 14
Today was like the apocalypse. Well, for LA. It doesn't rain here for a month but when it does, it RAINS. Driving on Sepulveda today involved guttering in huge windblown pools, and when I got back I found a twenty foot tree from our neighbor's yard lying in the middle of the street. It's like some bad disaster movie.
I want to say more about my recent post about art and craft but I'm exhausted right now, so I won't launch into anything too extensive. One thing, though, to put out by way of prelude, is that I assume, as a matter of course, that it is meaningful to speak of an audience failing a piece of art. I didn't like Anna Karenina when I read it in college; that says nothing about the book. I was 19, I didn't read it very well, and, more to the point, I wasn't able to relate to or care about its characters. I hadn't had enough experience of life, maybe. My not 'liking' it at that point really meant only that I needed more time with it. (Which of course leads to the ultimate question: How do you know when you've failed the art and how do you know when the art's failed you? Which is another subject. And also, why should you care? But the answer to that is simple: pleasure.) And then most art I know reveals itself only upon multiple viewings. Andrei Tarkovsky's Mirror is without question one of the four or five greatest movies ever made, maybe the apotheosis of what a movie can be. But, it makes demands. It requires suspense of skepticism, a willingness to be seduced, intense attention--and probably all that means you have to see two or three times before its pleasure makes itself available. And then it makes you feel. In fact, I wonder if this is another useful distinguishing feature in the art/craft dichotomy. Art ultimately demands a level of emotional engagement which is always in some way unpleasant. To feel is unpleasant, or at least it runs the risk of being. Because to feel pleasure requires one also suffer. Craft does not require we feel. It requires mental engagement but mental engagement is not so hard.
I'll think more about this later. I must sleep.
I want to say more about my recent post about art and craft but I'm exhausted right now, so I won't launch into anything too extensive. One thing, though, to put out by way of prelude, is that I assume, as a matter of course, that it is meaningful to speak of an audience failing a piece of art. I didn't like Anna Karenina when I read it in college; that says nothing about the book. I was 19, I didn't read it very well, and, more to the point, I wasn't able to relate to or care about its characters. I hadn't had enough experience of life, maybe. My not 'liking' it at that point really meant only that I needed more time with it. (Which of course leads to the ultimate question: How do you know when you've failed the art and how do you know when the art's failed you? Which is another subject. And also, why should you care? But the answer to that is simple: pleasure.) And then most art I know reveals itself only upon multiple viewings. Andrei Tarkovsky's Mirror is without question one of the four or five greatest movies ever made, maybe the apotheosis of what a movie can be. But, it makes demands. It requires suspense of skepticism, a willingness to be seduced, intense attention--and probably all that means you have to see two or three times before its pleasure makes itself available. And then it makes you feel. In fact, I wonder if this is another useful distinguishing feature in the art/craft dichotomy. Art ultimately demands a level of emotional engagement which is always in some way unpleasant. To feel is unpleasant, or at least it runs the risk of being. Because to feel pleasure requires one also suffer. Craft does not require we feel. It requires mental engagement but mental engagement is not so hard.
I'll think more about this later. I must sleep.
Saturday, March 19, 2011
Day 13
Tonight we're having guests over for dinner, for the first time in more than a year. (We still know no one here.) I've done the shopping (making a stir fried chicken basil thing, with fried basil leaves) and now prepare to settle in to my study for an afternoon's work. Basketball calls to me, but not very loudly. Very dizzy when I woke up, but it seems to have abated. Wife is home, her typical weekend grouchiness exacerbated by the worries about having people coming over later. After waking I was told to reclean the muffin pan. Muffin pan now (I hope) meets high standards of cleanliness held by wife. Cannot go forward in life without spotless, unused-looking muffin pan. This lesson I have learned once more.
Rewatched the second half of Big Lebowski last night, motivated in part by recent DVD viewing of a documentary The Little Lebowski Achievers (or some such). Film is about the birth and growth of the Lebowski cult, people who travel around the US every year to go to Lebowski festivals, dress in elaborate costumes, memorize Lebowski trivia, etc. Current thesis about Coen brothers (and my ongoing reservations about their cool, chilly, technically briliant work): they are the triumph of craft over art. They are ALL craft, no art. The distinction, I know, is not clear cut. (And Eliot, I think, argues persuasively at some point that at a certain point, extreme craft IS art.) Like Kubrick, they excel at everything except...I don't know. "Connect", in the words of my play. Mojo. Inspiration. Soul? Maybe this is why their best films are adaptations (True Grit, Miller's Crossing).... This is not the most fully fleshed-out idea, I know. Art vs. craft an ongoing obesssion of mine. Is there a distinction (yes, I think). If so, what is it? To me it is the difference between, say, the Beetles and Boston, between Bowie and David Sylvian, between the Coens and Tarkovsky (or Linklater, to pick someone more recent).
But then I consider someone like Updike or Nabokov, writers both vulnerable to similar criticisms. My feeling is that, at least in their best works, both men absolutely prove themselves to be artists, but I can see how each, in their writing, can seem similarly skewed. Maybe if my ability to appreciate techincal accomplishment in film were greater, I'd rate the Coens or Kubrick as highly as I do Updike, in literature?
Be interesting to hear the thoughts of my many millions of readers. (Except yours, Gullett. No one wants to hear those).
Ok, have to work.
Rewatched the second half of Big Lebowski last night, motivated in part by recent DVD viewing of a documentary The Little Lebowski Achievers (or some such). Film is about the birth and growth of the Lebowski cult, people who travel around the US every year to go to Lebowski festivals, dress in elaborate costumes, memorize Lebowski trivia, etc. Current thesis about Coen brothers (and my ongoing reservations about their cool, chilly, technically briliant work): they are the triumph of craft over art. They are ALL craft, no art. The distinction, I know, is not clear cut. (And Eliot, I think, argues persuasively at some point that at a certain point, extreme craft IS art.) Like Kubrick, they excel at everything except...I don't know. "Connect", in the words of my play. Mojo. Inspiration. Soul? Maybe this is why their best films are adaptations (True Grit, Miller's Crossing).... This is not the most fully fleshed-out idea, I know. Art vs. craft an ongoing obesssion of mine. Is there a distinction (yes, I think). If so, what is it? To me it is the difference between, say, the Beetles and Boston, between Bowie and David Sylvian, between the Coens and Tarkovsky (or Linklater, to pick someone more recent).
But then I consider someone like Updike or Nabokov, writers both vulnerable to similar criticisms. My feeling is that, at least in their best works, both men absolutely prove themselves to be artists, but I can see how each, in their writing, can seem similarly skewed. Maybe if my ability to appreciate techincal accomplishment in film were greater, I'd rate the Coens or Kubrick as highly as I do Updike, in literature?
Be interesting to hear the thoughts of my many millions of readers. (Except yours, Gullett. No one wants to hear those).
Ok, have to work.
Friday, March 18, 2011
Day 12
I worked till about 9:30 last night, coming up with material that is somewhere on the border between inspired and insane. I created a fake tv show about an alien planet where two organizations compete to sell people reproduction-enabling spores, and a cult formed in the 50s by a housewife which in the present is spawning two rival sects, each interpreting a different one of her writings in a different way. Watched Le Trou, a two hour prison break film set in a French jail. Lots of shots of people chipping at concrete with iron bars.
I'm creatively drained but I have to work till two today. Then I go to tutor my 13 year old, who's taking the SAT as part of a gifted and talented program.
NBC's new show, Perfect Couples, is growing on me. And Parks and Rec has become my favorite show on TV. I hope neither is cancelled. The latter is one of the best written, most creative shows on TV.
Ok, time to go get a sausage/egg sandwhich, watch ten minutes of NCAA, and go to work.
Morehead State! What a good game that must have been. Wish I'd seen it... (For some reason I foolishly taped the St. John's game, which turned out to be over by the first half).
I'm creatively drained but I have to work till two today. Then I go to tutor my 13 year old, who's taking the SAT as part of a gifted and talented program.
NBC's new show, Perfect Couples, is growing on me. And Parks and Rec has become my favorite show on TV. I hope neither is cancelled. The latter is one of the best written, most creative shows on TV.
Ok, time to go get a sausage/egg sandwhich, watch ten minutes of NCAA, and go to work.
Morehead State! What a good game that must have been. Wish I'd seen it... (For some reason I foolishly taped the St. John's game, which turned out to be over by the first half).
Thursday, March 17, 2011
Day 11
I need a haircut. My neck and ear area itches. However, getting a haircut involves taking a shower, driving somewhere, enduring twenty minutes of forced conversation with someone I don't know and then coming home. It's like...almost an hour, that it takes. The whole process. AN HOUR. Too much time. So I put it off until I almost can't bear the itching, then I go. But I can't go on Saturday or Sunday, because there's too great a chance I'll have to wait. Except, Saturday and/or Sunday is the one day of the week I take off from writing, so, technically it's the one day I SHOULD go to get a haircut.
The whole things makes me want to shave my head. I could do it in a bathtub once a month and be done with it. I wouldn't look very good but I don't look that good anyway. And it'd be over.
Huge parts of my life are spent avoiding things that seem to me to be hassles, things that I know seem like hassles to no other person on earth. My wife, for example, is constantly shocked by the lengths I will go to avoid doing certain things, especially things that force me to leave the house, especially things that force me to leave the house on a weekday. If somewhere in my study for example, was a large toxic spore that, once per day released fumes into the air that caused me to pass out for a few minutes, I would absolutely let the spore alone if the only way to get rid of it was to go drive somewhere. Think about it. If you only pass out for a few minutes, you're saving time staying in the house. (Well, I guess at some point those minutes would accumulate, and it would be more efficient to leave the house and hire the guy to come destroy the spore. So say the spore has only a fifty percent chance of releasing its fumes.)
This is one reason why it's good to have other people in your life--they clue you in on things about you that are slightly insane.
Wait--is that good?
I don't know. But I'm not getting a fricking haircut today, I can tell you that.
The whole things makes me want to shave my head. I could do it in a bathtub once a month and be done with it. I wouldn't look very good but I don't look that good anyway. And it'd be over.
Huge parts of my life are spent avoiding things that seem to me to be hassles, things that I know seem like hassles to no other person on earth. My wife, for example, is constantly shocked by the lengths I will go to avoid doing certain things, especially things that force me to leave the house, especially things that force me to leave the house on a weekday. If somewhere in my study for example, was a large toxic spore that, once per day released fumes into the air that caused me to pass out for a few minutes, I would absolutely let the spore alone if the only way to get rid of it was to go drive somewhere. Think about it. If you only pass out for a few minutes, you're saving time staying in the house. (Well, I guess at some point those minutes would accumulate, and it would be more efficient to leave the house and hire the guy to come destroy the spore. So say the spore has only a fifty percent chance of releasing its fumes.)
This is one reason why it's good to have other people in your life--they clue you in on things about you that are slightly insane.
Wait--is that good?
I don't know. But I'm not getting a fricking haircut today, I can tell you that.
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
Day 10
Self imposed deadline for Act I has come and gone. Act I is not done. It's more done that it was, but it's not done. Hopefully I'll have time to polish it as I move forward with Acts II and III, both of which are shorter.
Watched I Know Where I'm Going yesterday, a Powell/Pressburger film about a resolute and somewhat bossy Englishwoman who goes to the Western Isles of Scotland to be married to a wealthy industrialist. Unable to find a boat to take her to the Isle where the soon-to-be husband resides, she's forced to remain on the mainland with the Isle's true Laird, who's on a leave from World War II. They fall in love, of course. I typically love all the Powell/Pressburger movies, and this one was no exception. (Though I would put it below their masterpiece, A Matter Of Life And Death.)
Finished As I Lay Dying. Impression of Faulkner in no way improved by the experience. The characters and many of the story points work (especially moving was when Anse sells Jewel's horse, and the pharmacist who takes advantage of Dewey Dell) but the frequent shifts into a poetical philosophical register ("I am not I" and such) feels like something from a sophomore creative writing class. Where others find him profound, I find him affected and not a small bit silly. Now it's back to Crime and Punishment, a book I'm enjoying quite a bit more than I expected to.
Watched I Know Where I'm Going yesterday, a Powell/Pressburger film about a resolute and somewhat bossy Englishwoman who goes to the Western Isles of Scotland to be married to a wealthy industrialist. Unable to find a boat to take her to the Isle where the soon-to-be husband resides, she's forced to remain on the mainland with the Isle's true Laird, who's on a leave from World War II. They fall in love, of course. I typically love all the Powell/Pressburger movies, and this one was no exception. (Though I would put it below their masterpiece, A Matter Of Life And Death.)
Finished As I Lay Dying. Impression of Faulkner in no way improved by the experience. The characters and many of the story points work (especially moving was when Anse sells Jewel's horse, and the pharmacist who takes advantage of Dewey Dell) but the frequent shifts into a poetical philosophical register ("I am not I" and such) feels like something from a sophomore creative writing class. Where others find him profound, I find him affected and not a small bit silly. Now it's back to Crime and Punishment, a book I'm enjoying quite a bit more than I expected to.
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
Day 9
Woke up light-headed and have stayed that way. Feelings of anxiety over Act I of play woke me up in middle of night. Well, feelings of anxiety over Act I of play plus excessive amounts of Scotch drunk the night before (to allay my feelings of anxiety over Act I of play) woke me up last night. Scotch drinking probably responsible for morning's dizziness. Fine. DEFINITELY responsible for morning's dizziness. Dizziness in no way improved by reading fifty pages of As I Lay Dying. Dizziness, in fact, probably increased by reading said pages.
I have an unusually sharp interest in the NCAA Tournament this year. Probably it's because whenever I want a break from writing I watch ESPN and the last month ESPN has shown nothing but college basketball. As a result, I watched stretches of five or six games from the Big East and ACC Conference Tournaments. I also just watched ESPN's fairly subpar doc on the Fab Five. Wonder how different my life would have been if I had let myself be recruited by Steve Fisher, and gone on to play serious college basketball. I guess I'll never know....
I have an unusually sharp interest in the NCAA Tournament this year. Probably it's because whenever I want a break from writing I watch ESPN and the last month ESPN has shown nothing but college basketball. As a result, I watched stretches of five or six games from the Big East and ACC Conference Tournaments. I also just watched ESPN's fairly subpar doc on the Fab Five. Wonder how different my life would have been if I had let myself be recruited by Steve Fisher, and gone on to play serious college basketball. I guess I'll never know....
Monday, March 14, 2011
Day 8
I'm rereading As I Lay Dying right now, in order to help a student write an essay. Faulkner has never done much for me, despite recurring attempts to figure out what it is about his work that gets so many people excited. [I've read Absalom Absalom, As I Lay Dying, Light in August, and Intruder in the Dust (plus assorted stories); I've given him a fair chance, right?] But maybe I've been wrong? Maybe I've failed him, and not the reverse. We'll see. Though I have to say, I'm 90 pages in so far and I'm yet to feel much enthusiasm for the book. In 100 years will Faulkner still be canonical? I have my doubts.
I gave up on Big Love after getting halfway through the second season. The wife still watches it, however, and a few nights ago she pulled me into the living room to have me listen to the song that replaces "Good Vibrations" in the opening credits after the third season. Intrigued, I did a little research on Wikipedia, and learned that the song is called "Home" and was written by a British band called Engineers. I'm old and out of touch I had never heard of Engineers (or The Beach Boys), but thanks to the miracle of the world wide internet web, I now have the CD on which "Home" appears. It's pretty engaging. Wikipedia describes them as a "dream pop" band, as if it that were a genre I'm supposed to be familiar with. ("Ah yes, Dream Pop. As differentiated from Fantasy Pop, Half Awake But Not Fully Asleep Pop, and, of course, the dreaded Nightmare Pop.")
The sort-of point of this sort-of story is to do with the way I ended up driving around yesterday with an Engineers CD in my car. 1) I heard a song on a tv show. 2) I looked up the song on the Web. 3) I read about the band on itunes and then 4) I paid to download the CD. It all took ten minutes. Five years ago, none of that would have happened. I might have been curious about the song, but without any efficient mechanism to find out who wrote it, and not caring enough to sit through the end of an episode of Big Love and read the small print credits, I would have let the whole matter drop. But now, thanks to the web, slight curiosity, slight interest, can be immediately acted on. The point is not just to make everything easier, but to significantly lower the barrier of caring that it takes to get something done. Twenty-five years ago, you might have to had write a letter to a record label to enable yourself to listen to an album by a semi-obscure English band. Fifteen years ago, you would have had to care enough to drive to a CD store. Ten years ago, you could have gotten it from Amazon, but not immediately. Now you can satisfy what is at best a passing interest with only the slightest effort. Ease of access is probably an overall good thing; if you're a band it's probably to your benefit that people who don't care all that much about your music can acquire it very easily. The downside though is that fandom becomes a less commitment-requiring, and thus in some ways, fulfilling experience. Nothing anymore is hard to find, nothing is obscure; it's all equally available. That means it's impossible to be the only one in your class who's got the rare B-side of whatever band, or, on a larger scale, to be the whole one in middle school who's heard of, say, The Smiths. It's all right there. In an article I read recently, Brian Eno talks about how it's no longer possible, in some profound sense, to be 'cool.' I think this is part of what he means. In some way, being cool has to do with being in on stuff that others aren't. It used to require effort and knowing the right people; how else were you going to get the 'cool' music or know about the 'cool' writer, artist, whatever? But nothing's really hard to access anymore and that means coolness no longer means what it once did.
By the way, the CD on which "Home" appears is the Engineers' eponymous debut (which I recommend); the image above is of a different album. It's all I could find on Google images.
* * *
I gave up on Big Love after getting halfway through the second season. The wife still watches it, however, and a few nights ago she pulled me into the living room to have me listen to the song that replaces "Good Vibrations" in the opening credits after the third season. Intrigued, I did a little research on Wikipedia, and learned that the song is called "Home" and was written by a British band called Engineers. I'm old and out of touch I had never heard of Engineers (or The Beach Boys), but thanks to the miracle of the world wide internet web, I now have the CD on which "Home" appears. It's pretty engaging. Wikipedia describes them as a "dream pop" band, as if it that were a genre I'm supposed to be familiar with. ("Ah yes, Dream Pop. As differentiated from Fantasy Pop, Half Awake But Not Fully Asleep Pop, and, of course, the dreaded Nightmare Pop.")
The sort-of point of this sort-of story is to do with the way I ended up driving around yesterday with an Engineers CD in my car. 1) I heard a song on a tv show. 2) I looked up the song on the Web. 3) I read about the band on itunes and then 4) I paid to download the CD. It all took ten minutes. Five years ago, none of that would have happened. I might have been curious about the song, but without any efficient mechanism to find out who wrote it, and not caring enough to sit through the end of an episode of Big Love and read the small print credits, I would have let the whole matter drop. But now, thanks to the web, slight curiosity, slight interest, can be immediately acted on. The point is not just to make everything easier, but to significantly lower the barrier of caring that it takes to get something done. Twenty-five years ago, you might have to had write a letter to a record label to enable yourself to listen to an album by a semi-obscure English band. Fifteen years ago, you would have had to care enough to drive to a CD store. Ten years ago, you could have gotten it from Amazon, but not immediately. Now you can satisfy what is at best a passing interest with only the slightest effort. Ease of access is probably an overall good thing; if you're a band it's probably to your benefit that people who don't care all that much about your music can acquire it very easily. The downside though is that fandom becomes a less commitment-requiring, and thus in some ways, fulfilling experience. Nothing anymore is hard to find, nothing is obscure; it's all equally available. That means it's impossible to be the only one in your class who's got the rare B-side of whatever band, or, on a larger scale, to be the whole one in middle school who's heard of, say, The Smiths. It's all right there. In an article I read recently, Brian Eno talks about how it's no longer possible, in some profound sense, to be 'cool.' I think this is part of what he means. In some way, being cool has to do with being in on stuff that others aren't. It used to require effort and knowing the right people; how else were you going to get the 'cool' music or know about the 'cool' writer, artist, whatever? But nothing's really hard to access anymore and that means coolness no longer means what it once did.
By the way, the CD on which "Home" appears is the Engineers' eponymous debut (which I recommend); the image above is of a different album. It's all I could find on Google images.
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