(written earlier in the year while still at sea...)
I don't normally go in for horror or gothic fiction or movies. It just has never been my thing, but I think I've just gotten my hands on the wrong stuff. I might actually have inside me the makings of a decent enthusiast of the darker, creepier side.
Earlier I wrote about Neko Case tingling my spine and making my hair stand on end and lamented for fiction or film that could do the same. I hadn't prepared for this desire, but in a music exchange last fall a few MP3's of Call of Cthulu came my way. I discovered, much to my horror, that the three sections did not encompass the entire tale, so I listened rapturously then found myself against a wall: no more Lovecraft for me.
: (
I haven't avoided his books, just never picked one up. I'm kind of glad it came to me as it did. The audiobook version of this is perfect. The sounds quality isn't great actually and hisses a little bit, but the voice of the narrator... I'll venture there has never been a better match of voice to tale. I could listen to this speaker for hours reading anything, but it seems particularly suited to this tale. So gentle, I've started to listen to it as I go to sleep, which probably doesn't do good things to my dreams (or maybe amazing things).
It isn't often that I listen to an audio book and then want to go back and read it again, but this one I want both in text and audio. The language is delicious and rich. Had Lovecraft not chosen to benefit humanity using his gift for good as a sci fi author, who knows what horrors he might have done as an evangelist. Which I suppose he is in a way, just not the bad way. He preaches wonder and more than meets the eye and reminds us to be scared of the dark. Perhaps the ugliest stupidity to come out of the twentieth century is the widespread belief that we shouldn't have to be scared of the dark. Sure, it is nice to not always be terrified when the lights go out, but we should remember how to be scared in the dark. We need dark evangelists to remind that not everything is illuminated by reason and not everything makes sense or has motives we understand.
Perhaps I get ahead of myself in assuming I understand our author's message. I plan to dive deeper in and remedy this deficit.
Thursday, May 14, 2009
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
More sad song love: Mountain Angel
(written early in the year while still at sea...)
I've already established that I like sad songs. This is just a short moment to comment on the latest which is breaking my heart into little pieces. It is nothing new that I'm listening to Dolly Parton. Love, love, love her. Anyway, I've lately been giving her another listen to and "Mountain Angel" snuck up on me and punched me in the tear ducts. (incongruously, my shuffle just followed it with "9 to 5" which is not a transition I'm ready to make.)
Such a pretty little song, but just horrible and so damn sad. It would almost be a hokey tale, but Ms. Parton knows how to write if nothing else. She obviously also knows how to sing, and in this song her two talents combine to terrible effect. The melody is so sweet and gentle, and the story starts out the same but it doesn't stop until the title character is a naked crazy lady scaring children and screaming through the night after her death upon on her dead baby's grave. Don't hold back, Dolly.
I'm sure I've listened to this before and just sat around soaking up its sad, because in college Kearney and Willis got this cd and became obsessed with it. I didn't like her cover of "Shine" (because I dislike the song itself, not her rendition) and was already a fan, so I didn't quite replay it quite like they did, but I am sure I was sat down and told to listen to the song and have my heart stomped on for a little while. I don't remember this specifically happening, but I know this happened because I do remember them (aaaakkkk!!! "9 to 5" again! Too happy, too soon... ahhh, "Dagger Through the Heart", much better) sitting me down and forcing me to listened with focus to songs from this album as they had done with other albums and songs, including most notably "The Coward of the County" by Kenny Rodgers. If you don't know the song, go listen to it; if you aren't crying at the end of the song, you need to see the Wizard and ask him for a heart. Maybe I should blame my obsession with sad songs on them (it totally predated them, they might have made me more willing to talk about it and coached me to cry out loud over songs).
I've said before that even if you have to cry listening to it to be human, ultimately "The Coward of the County" has a cathartic resolution at the end which tempers the brutality of the sadness in the song. In a way this makes it all the more potent and it is usually this little glimmer of hope that is the point at which you crack and breakdown listening to it. The tragedy isn't always as bald as in "Coward" ("...the torn dress, the shattered look..."), but these hokey emotional destroyers are the secret ninjas of country music. They sound so friendly and sweet and you don't even realize you've started listening to the words, you didn't mean to leave it on this station and all of a sudden you are stuck at a red light trying to wipe away the tears before the light changes (or the other drivers notice). Why didn't someone warn you that something named "Teddybear's Last Ride" or "Giddyup Go" or "Christmas Carol" could blow up your heart like that? Hell, if you aren't careful and no one is around to keep face in front of, even "Roll On" can do it, but all these songs leave you feeling exhausted but still somehow a little vindicated. It all works out in the end. "Coat of Many Colors" is this kind of song, actually one of the most potent and dangerous of the genre, only made safe by its ubiquity.
"Mountain Angel" does not do this, does not take you down and bring you up. You probably won't actually cry listening to it; it doesn't do tricks to give the heart a big yank other than start off happy and sound so sweet. But if you are sad and you are open to feeling the cracks in humanity's shiny veneer, this one just keeps dropping, down and down. Sunshine turns to clouds, man leaves girl pregnant, baby dies, she has mental breakdown... it is just getting going.
I've already established that I like sad songs. This is just a short moment to comment on the latest which is breaking my heart into little pieces. It is nothing new that I'm listening to Dolly Parton. Love, love, love her. Anyway, I've lately been giving her another listen to and "Mountain Angel" snuck up on me and punched me in the tear ducts. (incongruously, my shuffle just followed it with "9 to 5" which is not a transition I'm ready to make.)
Such a pretty little song, but just horrible and so damn sad. It would almost be a hokey tale, but Ms. Parton knows how to write if nothing else. She obviously also knows how to sing, and in this song her two talents combine to terrible effect. The melody is so sweet and gentle, and the story starts out the same but it doesn't stop until the title character is a naked crazy lady scaring children and screaming through the night after her death upon on her dead baby's grave. Don't hold back, Dolly.
I'm sure I've listened to this before and just sat around soaking up its sad, because in college Kearney and Willis got this cd and became obsessed with it. I didn't like her cover of "Shine" (because I dislike the song itself, not her rendition) and was already a fan, so I didn't quite replay it quite like they did, but I am sure I was sat down and told to listen to the song and have my heart stomped on for a little while. I don't remember this specifically happening, but I know this happened because I do remember them (aaaakkkk!!! "9 to 5" again! Too happy, too soon... ahhh, "Dagger Through the Heart", much better) sitting me down and forcing me to listened with focus to songs from this album as they had done with other albums and songs, including most notably "The Coward of the County" by Kenny Rodgers. If you don't know the song, go listen to it; if you aren't crying at the end of the song, you need to see the Wizard and ask him for a heart. Maybe I should blame my obsession with sad songs on them (it totally predated them, they might have made me more willing to talk about it and coached me to cry out loud over songs).
I've said before that even if you have to cry listening to it to be human, ultimately "The Coward of the County" has a cathartic resolution at the end which tempers the brutality of the sadness in the song. In a way this makes it all the more potent and it is usually this little glimmer of hope that is the point at which you crack and breakdown listening to it. The tragedy isn't always as bald as in "Coward" ("...the torn dress, the shattered look..."), but these hokey emotional destroyers are the secret ninjas of country music. They sound so friendly and sweet and you don't even realize you've started listening to the words, you didn't mean to leave it on this station and all of a sudden you are stuck at a red light trying to wipe away the tears before the light changes (or the other drivers notice). Why didn't someone warn you that something named "Teddybear's Last Ride" or "Giddyup Go" or "Christmas Carol" could blow up your heart like that? Hell, if you aren't careful and no one is around to keep face in front of, even "Roll On" can do it, but all these songs leave you feeling exhausted but still somehow a little vindicated. It all works out in the end. "Coat of Many Colors" is this kind of song, actually one of the most potent and dangerous of the genre, only made safe by its ubiquity.
"Mountain Angel" does not do this, does not take you down and bring you up. You probably won't actually cry listening to it; it doesn't do tricks to give the heart a big yank other than start off happy and sound so sweet. But if you are sad and you are open to feeling the cracks in humanity's shiny veneer, this one just keeps dropping, down and down. Sunshine turns to clouds, man leaves girl pregnant, baby dies, she has mental breakdown... it is just getting going.
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Neko, rediscovered/re-explored
(written earlier in the year while still at sea...)
Neko Case is not a new discovery for me. Granted, everyone else found her before I did. She came to me as so many musical discoveries do: on a mix cd Mason made for me. I can't remember which one, but on it he had put "Deep Red Bells". At first it only sort of caught my attention, but then there is that moment when she asks, "Where does this mean world cast its cold eye? Who's left to suffer long about you? Does your soul cast about like an old paper bag past empty lots and early graves?" And you are swept off your feet...
She stole my heart but I haven't accumulated near enough of her music. Mostly I've listened to her through other people's collections. This is more accidental. I always think I have more of her music than I do. I used to have more, but other than a couple of random songs, the only album of hers I have on my computer (my musical lifeline out here in the lonely ocean) is of her live from Austin. I've listened to this whole album before, but tonight something about it is sending chills up the back of my neck.
This shouldn't be surprising. She has that voice. If ever a voice could sing haunted, she is the one. And you know this when you hear her the first time. It isn't a secret that sneaks up on you slowly, but somehow this realization feels fresh and new listening tonight.
Maybe this is partly because of the intentions with which I began listening to her. I'm working on a mix CD for Ben, which is difficult since we share most of our music already and I haven't really gotten much new music lately. And what music I do have that he doesn't has already gone on a thousand other mixes, so trying to make a new one that doesn't just sound like one of the old ones is a challenge. I suppose I should just wait, but I like making mixes when I am out to sea and feel double compelled this time for some reason that I have to succeed in this mission. Anyway, trying to sort out what music I got from Ben and what came from other sources, I sorted iTunes by 'date added' to help me remember what came from where and anything that I thought came from another source and hadn't been shared on our home computer yet got scoured for potential songs. Enter Neko. Both from this aforementioned cd and also from a song she did for a tribute album for the movie Nashville (we already know how obsessed I've been with that lately). I grabbed "Favorite" and threw it in the possible mix pile. "Favorite" sounds sweet and nice, right?
Burnt houses and warm deer blood soaking through her dress in her dream... maybe not right for a mix cd for your sweetheart. Great song, but why don't I go back and see if I can find a sweet love song by Ms. Case instead? And with such intentions I reentered her songs. Searching for a love song, the voodoo and magic came screaming out at me. Some how, on this listen the creepiness jumped out at me. Good creepiness, I'm totally digging it, but damn. Wow. It isn't enough that it just unearths the emotions she puts into the songs, but it reminds me of seeing her live.
She performed a few years ago at the Bowery Ballroom, which is one of my favorite live venues and it wasn't likely I'd have the chance to see her play anywhere that small again anytime soon. Several friends of mine were going and I got a ticket too. Simple enough, but Ben and I were broken up but both going. I am certain the situation was more complicated than this, as he will later remind me, but this was complicated enough. We hadn't broken up because we were no longer in love, rather we were driving each other crazy and at least from my side I didn't know how to make it better and felt like I was making things worse. So there I am with a group of friends and a boy I'm in love with but broken up from. He's told me since that that night was insanely difficult for him, so I know I wasn't alone in standing there blown away by the music but having no idea what to do with my hands or how close to stand or how to act at all. The situation itself was so intense by itself, but now listening closely again I'm reminded how this voice must have heightened the tension and electricity. I sort of feed off of awkward terrifying energy (a survival trait learned through years of being unimaginably self-conscious; otherwise I would be institutionalized) , so I also remember that night as exhilarating at the same time as I remember it as painful and confusing.
All said, Neko Case making my hair stand on end shouldn't come as any surprise to me and maybe she requires special consideration anyway for putting on a mix cd anyway. Listening and feeling the creepiness almost makes me want to watch creepy movies or read spooky books. I don't really go for gore and think most horror movies really miss the mark in terms of really making that mood without just going in for the kill. Hitchcock, of course, knew how and The Twilight Zone did too, but I can't think of any movie that really does what I want right now.
In the ideal world where I get to decide who sings together, Neko Case and Emmylou Harris get together and make this mind blowing other-worldly gothic southern rock opera. Actually, I've long wanted to put Emmylou together with Lucinda Williams, Iris Dement, and Nanci Griffith for a gothic southern rock opera. They all have that crazy warble in their voice that lets them sounds both sugar sweet and tormented. Neko Case doesn't have the warble, but can you imagine her doing a duet with Emmylou Harris? Let's make this a three disk project. These are the main women on it, but let's have backup harmonies from Dolly Parton, Kathy Mattea, Patty Loveless, and Natalie Maines . For a little balance, let's bring in Dwight Yoakam, Willie Nelson, Raul Malo, and Toby Keith. Hell, as long as this is my fantasy, let's also throw in Joel Gibb and the guy from Songs: Ohia. Daniel Lanois as producer. Sort of like a mix between Wrecking Ball and The Red Headed Stranger, but darker. I mean really haunting and cold spooky. Start spare and build, piling harmonies and layers on, going from whispers to screaming and howls. Not every song, but enough. Back and forth between too many voices and instruments and spare, bare-bones sound. It has to be recorded in New Orleans, during a hurricane. Ok, just kidding about the hurricane part. Before, during, and after a thunderstorm.
Neko Case is not a new discovery for me. Granted, everyone else found her before I did. She came to me as so many musical discoveries do: on a mix cd Mason made for me. I can't remember which one, but on it he had put "Deep Red Bells". At first it only sort of caught my attention, but then there is that moment when she asks, "Where does this mean world cast its cold eye? Who's left to suffer long about you? Does your soul cast about like an old paper bag past empty lots and early graves?" And you are swept off your feet...
She stole my heart but I haven't accumulated near enough of her music. Mostly I've listened to her through other people's collections. This is more accidental. I always think I have more of her music than I do. I used to have more, but other than a couple of random songs, the only album of hers I have on my computer (my musical lifeline out here in the lonely ocean) is of her live from Austin. I've listened to this whole album before, but tonight something about it is sending chills up the back of my neck.
This shouldn't be surprising. She has that voice. If ever a voice could sing haunted, she is the one. And you know this when you hear her the first time. It isn't a secret that sneaks up on you slowly, but somehow this realization feels fresh and new listening tonight.
Maybe this is partly because of the intentions with which I began listening to her. I'm working on a mix CD for Ben, which is difficult since we share most of our music already and I haven't really gotten much new music lately. And what music I do have that he doesn't has already gone on a thousand other mixes, so trying to make a new one that doesn't just sound like one of the old ones is a challenge. I suppose I should just wait, but I like making mixes when I am out to sea and feel double compelled this time for some reason that I have to succeed in this mission. Anyway, trying to sort out what music I got from Ben and what came from other sources, I sorted iTunes by 'date added' to help me remember what came from where and anything that I thought came from another source and hadn't been shared on our home computer yet got scoured for potential songs. Enter Neko. Both from this aforementioned cd and also from a song she did for a tribute album for the movie Nashville (we already know how obsessed I've been with that lately). I grabbed "Favorite" and threw it in the possible mix pile. "Favorite" sounds sweet and nice, right?
Burnt houses and warm deer blood soaking through her dress in her dream... maybe not right for a mix cd for your sweetheart. Great song, but why don't I go back and see if I can find a sweet love song by Ms. Case instead? And with such intentions I reentered her songs. Searching for a love song, the voodoo and magic came screaming out at me. Some how, on this listen the creepiness jumped out at me. Good creepiness, I'm totally digging it, but damn. Wow. It isn't enough that it just unearths the emotions she puts into the songs, but it reminds me of seeing her live.
She performed a few years ago at the Bowery Ballroom, which is one of my favorite live venues and it wasn't likely I'd have the chance to see her play anywhere that small again anytime soon. Several friends of mine were going and I got a ticket too. Simple enough, but Ben and I were broken up but both going. I am certain the situation was more complicated than this, as he will later remind me, but this was complicated enough. We hadn't broken up because we were no longer in love, rather we were driving each other crazy and at least from my side I didn't know how to make it better and felt like I was making things worse. So there I am with a group of friends and a boy I'm in love with but broken up from. He's told me since that that night was insanely difficult for him, so I know I wasn't alone in standing there blown away by the music but having no idea what to do with my hands or how close to stand or how to act at all. The situation itself was so intense by itself, but now listening closely again I'm reminded how this voice must have heightened the tension and electricity. I sort of feed off of awkward terrifying energy (a survival trait learned through years of being unimaginably self-conscious; otherwise I would be institutionalized) , so I also remember that night as exhilarating at the same time as I remember it as painful and confusing.
All said, Neko Case making my hair stand on end shouldn't come as any surprise to me and maybe she requires special consideration anyway for putting on a mix cd anyway. Listening and feeling the creepiness almost makes me want to watch creepy movies or read spooky books. I don't really go for gore and think most horror movies really miss the mark in terms of really making that mood without just going in for the kill. Hitchcock, of course, knew how and The Twilight Zone did too, but I can't think of any movie that really does what I want right now.
In the ideal world where I get to decide who sings together, Neko Case and Emmylou Harris get together and make this mind blowing other-worldly gothic southern rock opera. Actually, I've long wanted to put Emmylou together with Lucinda Williams, Iris Dement, and Nanci Griffith for a gothic southern rock opera. They all have that crazy warble in their voice that lets them sounds both sugar sweet and tormented. Neko Case doesn't have the warble, but can you imagine her doing a duet with Emmylou Harris? Let's make this a three disk project. These are the main women on it, but let's have backup harmonies from Dolly Parton, Kathy Mattea, Patty Loveless, and Natalie Maines . For a little balance, let's bring in Dwight Yoakam, Willie Nelson, Raul Malo, and Toby Keith. Hell, as long as this is my fantasy, let's also throw in Joel Gibb and the guy from Songs: Ohia. Daniel Lanois as producer. Sort of like a mix between Wrecking Ball and The Red Headed Stranger, but darker. I mean really haunting and cold spooky. Start spare and build, piling harmonies and layers on, going from whispers to screaming and howls. Not every song, but enough. Back and forth between too many voices and instruments and spare, bare-bones sound. It has to be recorded in New Orleans, during a hurricane. Ok, just kidding about the hurricane part. Before, during, and after a thunderstorm.
Monday, May 11, 2009
Redwall
Redwall by Brian Jaques
I had fled the boat in a hurried rush after being woken from an attempt to catch up on sleep by the stinging difficulty I had trying to breath as our boat was enveloped in a cloud of ammonia released from the cannery. As you can tell, the day started auspiciously. My retreat had been made to the comfort and wifi access of the lobby at the Grand Hotel, where I discovered in my haste I hadn't brought all the paperwork I had planned on dropping off at the office. Fortunately there wasn't much and it wasn't pressing that it get there, so after puttering around on the internet for a while I retired to the bar/restaurant for a final beer with an overdue lunch before heading back to the boat to begin our next trip. By chance, another observer wandered in looking for someone else and as she couldn't find them was heading to the library. This was on my way so we hopped in a cab and I made a last ditch attempt to snag some more reading on the way back. Being unplanned, I flew through the shelves. I wanted something fun and light to read. I haven't exhausted the supplies of books I brought along, but nothing was jumping out at me so I wanted something new.
The only Terry Pratchett book they had, I've already read. No Charles Stross. Scanning the shelves, they had a whole collection of Brian Jaques novels. I've never read him, but I've seen his novels forever in libraries and in bookstores. There didn't seem to be a coherent order to the books, but grabbing one randomly I managed to grab his first, Redwall. A fantasy medieval world populated by woodland creatures in human roles? A fantasy world with numerous books in a not necessarily chronological order? Perfect.
Against my better judgment, I grabbed only the first book. I don't know how many books we are allowed to check out at once and I already had two books about fish (yeah, I'm that kind of nerd). It is the middle book of a trilogy, written first before being followed by a prequel and then the final book. After these many more stories had been added to the universe but that was as much order as I could figure out in my haste.
This whole trip I've had a serious solitaire problem. I can't stop playing compulsively. We've had rough weather and whole days where I couldn't go out on deck, so I've had tons of time that needed filling. Mostly it had been filled with solitaire. My mind was starting to slip. Hence my desperate search for fun reading. Having started Redwall yesterday, here I sit waiting for the next string of pots so I can sample, already ready to review the novel.
I sped through it because I couldn't sleep and it is an easy read. I mean really easy. I don't know that I would call it a page turner, but I enjoyed diving into the story and just floating along. There are no real twists and none of the characters is at all complicated. Good kind mice, bad evil rats; wandering rogues vs. peaceful monastery; prophetic legend foretold and fulfilled. It does take a cute path getting there and I enjoyed the meander, but it also annoyed on several fronts.
It was pleasant if I didn't ask it to be complicated and resigned to just cheering for good guys and booing the bad guys, which was easy enough. I felt like they left big gaping what-if's and why-not's in the story though that irritated and didn't fully flesh out the feel of the world we were moving through. I never got a full feeling for whether or not these creatures were moving through a human sized world or one built on their scale. True, it did clearly state that mice had built Redwall Abbey, but obviously on a scale large enough for badgers and such to wander through but also small enough that said badger might lift a table. So larger than mouse scale, smaller than human scale, but what about the trees and the forest? This was an animal scale construction but the walls were so high that a tall elm only just reached over its walls? The descriptions have the animals moving through the abbey world as if it were built for their size but then incongruously has them dwarfed against everyday objects. Nit picking, I know, but these are the details that make or break the illusion of a fictional world. This was a world which required a great deal of just setting disbelief aside and not asking questions or critiquing. You have to want to read it and enjoy it or it would be really easy to just pull apart. The seams are not tightly sown and not hidden at all.
I gave myself up to the fast and loose of the scale of the environment, which I was willing to do because you get the feeling that this was a story written enjoyably by someone who had loved dipping into this world and creating it. It feels like an exercise in imagination and I like that. So I'm being gentler than I might otherwise be. And I'll probably read further into the series when I get back. But (you knew there was a 'but'), the what-if's and why-not's really did grate at me as I read. Mostly they reconciled themselves with the weak argument, "Otherwise the story would end sooner/differently." Why was there a solitary beaver who got no name? Why only one badger? Both are naturally social animals. Only one snake/hare/family of squirrels in the whole landscape? Fine, the author can limit the characters; lines must be drawn somewhere. Still, not particularly believable. Same with tactics employed in defense of the Abbey. The badger and beaver can make a cross-bow in a matter of hours and deploy it with enough accuracy to impale the head of a rat inside a tent across the field, but they can't come up with one more stick to shoot again when they realize they hit the wrong rat and never use the weapon again? Really?
But in the end I'll read more of the series (when I'm on a boat again). You can feel how much the writer enjoyed writing this when he wrote it and perhaps it becomes more tightly crafted as the series continues. My first memory of writing as an enjoyable experience was in second or third grade. We had to write a story. i think it only had to be a few paragraphs long, but once I started, I couldn't stop. I wrote page after page, taking this assignment home and sitting in the principals office the next day trying to finish as adults exasperatedly told me to just finish it so it could be graded. But the story wasn't finished and I didn't know how to end it. It was just getting bigger and bigger (I suppose I've always been longwinded). It is worth noting that I wrote very slowly and and have horrible handwriting and as much as I enjoyed the process of daydreaming the story (isn't that what I already did during every class?), the process of writing was actually fairly torturous. Writing remained so until I learned to type. I bring all this up because reading Redwall reminded me of this story because my story was also populated by woodland creatures and I could feel behind the writing that feeling of daydreamed worlds being made manifest on the page. I don't remember what my story was actually about, but there were lizards and frogs with guns that shot grains of sand, and a salamander scientist/inventor who lived in an observatory which looked like (and could open like) a magnolia blossom which was at the end of a branch over a lake. I wonder whatever happened to that story. I know my mother has a permanent file of any writings/drawings/whatever any of us created but I somehow doubt she got that story. I think I was ashamed of it because it wasn't finished right because they rushed me and I was the kind of child who would hide something like that. I should ask her though...
I had fled the boat in a hurried rush after being woken from an attempt to catch up on sleep by the stinging difficulty I had trying to breath as our boat was enveloped in a cloud of ammonia released from the cannery. As you can tell, the day started auspiciously. My retreat had been made to the comfort and wifi access of the lobby at the Grand Hotel, where I discovered in my haste I hadn't brought all the paperwork I had planned on dropping off at the office. Fortunately there wasn't much and it wasn't pressing that it get there, so after puttering around on the internet for a while I retired to the bar/restaurant for a final beer with an overdue lunch before heading back to the boat to begin our next trip. By chance, another observer wandered in looking for someone else and as she couldn't find them was heading to the library. This was on my way so we hopped in a cab and I made a last ditch attempt to snag some more reading on the way back. Being unplanned, I flew through the shelves. I wanted something fun and light to read. I haven't exhausted the supplies of books I brought along, but nothing was jumping out at me so I wanted something new.
The only Terry Pratchett book they had, I've already read. No Charles Stross. Scanning the shelves, they had a whole collection of Brian Jaques novels. I've never read him, but I've seen his novels forever in libraries and in bookstores. There didn't seem to be a coherent order to the books, but grabbing one randomly I managed to grab his first, Redwall. A fantasy medieval world populated by woodland creatures in human roles? A fantasy world with numerous books in a not necessarily chronological order? Perfect.
Against my better judgment, I grabbed only the first book. I don't know how many books we are allowed to check out at once and I already had two books about fish (yeah, I'm that kind of nerd). It is the middle book of a trilogy, written first before being followed by a prequel and then the final book. After these many more stories had been added to the universe but that was as much order as I could figure out in my haste.
This whole trip I've had a serious solitaire problem. I can't stop playing compulsively. We've had rough weather and whole days where I couldn't go out on deck, so I've had tons of time that needed filling. Mostly it had been filled with solitaire. My mind was starting to slip. Hence my desperate search for fun reading. Having started Redwall yesterday, here I sit waiting for the next string of pots so I can sample, already ready to review the novel.
I sped through it because I couldn't sleep and it is an easy read. I mean really easy. I don't know that I would call it a page turner, but I enjoyed diving into the story and just floating along. There are no real twists and none of the characters is at all complicated. Good kind mice, bad evil rats; wandering rogues vs. peaceful monastery; prophetic legend foretold and fulfilled. It does take a cute path getting there and I enjoyed the meander, but it also annoyed on several fronts.
It was pleasant if I didn't ask it to be complicated and resigned to just cheering for good guys and booing the bad guys, which was easy enough. I felt like they left big gaping what-if's and why-not's in the story though that irritated and didn't fully flesh out the feel of the world we were moving through. I never got a full feeling for whether or not these creatures were moving through a human sized world or one built on their scale. True, it did clearly state that mice had built Redwall Abbey, but obviously on a scale large enough for badgers and such to wander through but also small enough that said badger might lift a table. So larger than mouse scale, smaller than human scale, but what about the trees and the forest? This was an animal scale construction but the walls were so high that a tall elm only just reached over its walls? The descriptions have the animals moving through the abbey world as if it were built for their size but then incongruously has them dwarfed against everyday objects. Nit picking, I know, but these are the details that make or break the illusion of a fictional world. This was a world which required a great deal of just setting disbelief aside and not asking questions or critiquing. You have to want to read it and enjoy it or it would be really easy to just pull apart. The seams are not tightly sown and not hidden at all.
I gave myself up to the fast and loose of the scale of the environment, which I was willing to do because you get the feeling that this was a story written enjoyably by someone who had loved dipping into this world and creating it. It feels like an exercise in imagination and I like that. So I'm being gentler than I might otherwise be. And I'll probably read further into the series when I get back. But (you knew there was a 'but'), the what-if's and why-not's really did grate at me as I read. Mostly they reconciled themselves with the weak argument, "Otherwise the story would end sooner/differently." Why was there a solitary beaver who got no name? Why only one badger? Both are naturally social animals. Only one snake/hare/family of squirrels in the whole landscape? Fine, the author can limit the characters; lines must be drawn somewhere. Still, not particularly believable. Same with tactics employed in defense of the Abbey. The badger and beaver can make a cross-bow in a matter of hours and deploy it with enough accuracy to impale the head of a rat inside a tent across the field, but they can't come up with one more stick to shoot again when they realize they hit the wrong rat and never use the weapon again? Really?
But in the end I'll read more of the series (when I'm on a boat again). You can feel how much the writer enjoyed writing this when he wrote it and perhaps it becomes more tightly crafted as the series continues. My first memory of writing as an enjoyable experience was in second or third grade. We had to write a story. i think it only had to be a few paragraphs long, but once I started, I couldn't stop. I wrote page after page, taking this assignment home and sitting in the principals office the next day trying to finish as adults exasperatedly told me to just finish it so it could be graded. But the story wasn't finished and I didn't know how to end it. It was just getting bigger and bigger (I suppose I've always been longwinded). It is worth noting that I wrote very slowly and and have horrible handwriting and as much as I enjoyed the process of daydreaming the story (isn't that what I already did during every class?), the process of writing was actually fairly torturous. Writing remained so until I learned to type. I bring all this up because reading Redwall reminded me of this story because my story was also populated by woodland creatures and I could feel behind the writing that feeling of daydreamed worlds being made manifest on the page. I don't remember what my story was actually about, but there were lizards and frogs with guns that shot grains of sand, and a salamander scientist/inventor who lived in an observatory which looked like (and could open like) a magnolia blossom which was at the end of a branch over a lake. I wonder whatever happened to that story. I know my mother has a permanent file of any writings/drawings/whatever any of us created but I somehow doubt she got that story. I think I was ashamed of it because it wasn't finished right because they rushed me and I was the kind of child who would hide something like that. I should ask her though...
Friday, May 08, 2009
A few thoughts upon reading the March 5, 2009 issue of Rolling Stone
(written while still at sea earlier this year)
A few thoughts upon reading the March 5, 2009 issue of Rolling Stone:
1) On the cover and in the third picture in the article about her, Taylor Swift looks like Stevie Nicks (in a very good way). In the other pictures shot for the article, particularly the second one, she looks like Chris Crocker. Really.
2) In her Q&A interview, Stevie Nicks looks like she is made out of plastic, though certainly lifelike. I do like the style she is rocking. Hello white top hat. In the actual interview she comes across as likable, but a little crazy. Talking in third person? Really?
3) Can someone pry those stupid-ass glasses off Bono's face already? Who thinks they are a good idea? Does he just really like them or is there a misguided stylist telling him this is cool? There is something to be said for having a signature look or making an accessory your own, but wearing something no one else wears because it is impossible to not look stupid wearing it is not the same thing as wearing something so well that it is impossible for anyone else to wear them like you. Even Michael Jackson took off that sparkly glove and the black shoes and white socks, but he still owns those looks. The damn red or yellow glasses? They own Bono, not the other way around.
4) Miley Cyris is what Suzy from Calvin and Hobbes would grow up to look like.
5) The writing in the magazine is good, but the articles about things other than music are better than the articles about music.
A few thoughts upon reading the March 5, 2009 issue of Rolling Stone:
1) On the cover and in the third picture in the article about her, Taylor Swift looks like Stevie Nicks (in a very good way). In the other pictures shot for the article, particularly the second one, she looks like Chris Crocker. Really.
2) In her Q&A interview, Stevie Nicks looks like she is made out of plastic, though certainly lifelike. I do like the style she is rocking. Hello white top hat. In the actual interview she comes across as likable, but a little crazy. Talking in third person? Really?
3) Can someone pry those stupid-ass glasses off Bono's face already? Who thinks they are a good idea? Does he just really like them or is there a misguided stylist telling him this is cool? There is something to be said for having a signature look or making an accessory your own, but wearing something no one else wears because it is impossible to not look stupid wearing it is not the same thing as wearing something so well that it is impossible for anyone else to wear them like you. Even Michael Jackson took off that sparkly glove and the black shoes and white socks, but he still owns those looks. The damn red or yellow glasses? They own Bono, not the other way around.
4) Miley Cyris is what Suzy from Calvin and Hobbes would grow up to look like.
5) The writing in the magazine is good, but the articles about things other than music are better than the articles about music.
Thursday, May 07, 2009
Certified!!!!
I'm officially certified as a crab observer for ADF&G! They sent me a hat and a lollipop to prove it.
the hills: no wonder our enemies hate us
This will sound disingenuous, but I don't normally watch the hills. Everyone says that, because even if you like watching the show it is impossible to not know that it is a horrible thing. Watching it is bad, that it exists is bad, that people produce something like this is bad. I've been unable to justify its existence at all, at least until last night. I may finally be able to make a (feeble) argument in its defense.
SOMEONE made me watch it last night, though I've been told I'm not allowed to tell anyone that he watches it because he is appropriately ashamed of this vile habit, but why would I sit through such torture if I can't make fun of it afterwards? Well, I'm nicer than I look, so I'll let this person remain nameless. Let's call him "Beth". Beth and I had gotten in a squabble and there was that moment where you feel like you've already had all the arguments a couple can manage and that you are doomed to repeat ridiculous gripes forever and ever. In that shortsighted moment, it is easy to blind yourself with all the ways that you and this other person are incompatible and also question whether or not you really are just a jackass. Maybe I'm retarded and don't know how to manage a relationship. Maybe I don't know how to communicate my feelings effectively or listen when someone else is trying to communicate them to me. Maybe we just don't work together...
None of this is true. I know that and even when feeling frustrated facing the picked scab of slow healing old fights, I still know that we've got a real good thing going on. I'm no fatalist and know better than to wallow too deeply or believe that moments of frustration are doomed to be eternal, but it is nice sometimes to have something external to your situation remind you how good you've got it.
When Beth wanted to quit talking and watch the hills, you can (if you have ever met me) imagine the look I shot in his direction. It was somewhere between over-my-dead-body and i-dare-you-to-try. Watching the hills isn't something you should wish on your worst enemy, much less someone you love. Had there been someone else to protect from this blight, I might have stood strong but he made an impassioned plea and I relented.
If you've never seen the hills, don't. It is a bunch of horrible vapid people who do horrible vapid things. Actually, that is being generous: the cast is entirely RealDolls and motorized mannikins. The purported main character, Lauren, almost comes across as human and occasionally says things that make sense. The worst people in the show are heidi and spencer. She is on the show because she is pretty. She looks like she has escaped from the Playboy Mansion and and flounces around with layered blonde extensions and a pouty, perpetually surprised/confused look. And why not? spencer doesn't make any sense. There is no reason he should be on television. She is at least pretty. He is not, and while she isn't particularly likable, her abject idiocy allows for occasional flashes of unintended humor. He isn't even funny. This is the second episode of the show I have ever seen, but just that small snippet leaves an indelible bad taste in the mouth towards this couple and him in particular. In this episode, the two are going through couples counseling. The counselor winces as she listens to their idiocy. heidi is flipping out over a bartender who he flirts with and who is sending him text messages and squares off against this jezebel when she and her brunette gang step to her blonde fembot gang at a club. All of them come across as stupid monkeys dancing in front of a camera, but the brunette wins the round by pointing out that at the end of the day, heidi is still dating a douche bag who hits on other girls and always will.
The other main drama of the show was some awful girl (named "Jayde") with bad collagen injections and a bottle of Jaegermeister acting like an idiot over a dumb boyfriend. But I'm not really here to give a play-by-play recap; I have no desire to recreate this horror. Watching all this absurdity though, suddenly my own relationship seemed incredibly healthy. We get in fights and sometimes silly fights and sometimes the same silly fights over and over, but there is no way either of us is ever going to be that disagreeable. The show's value seems to be in showing what is purported to be a fabulous life (glamor, parties, clothes, etc.) and making it look like the worst hell imaginable. And not even a fun sort of wretched hell. Lost occasionally looks like hell, being stuck on some time-travel island with an atomic bomb and people trying to kill you and your friends, but it is an interesting dynamic hell. The hell that is the hills just looks so painfully boring. They make leisure and money look awful.
And then there is what they do for relationships. If they make hanging out in bars look painful, they make dating look like pure torture (and not the waterboarding kind, but the ripping-off-fingernails-with-pliers kind). Sitting watching these... people(?) after having my own spat suddenly made me appreciate what I've got. We (like every couple) come up with some stupid things to fight about, but contrast against this alternate universe displayed in the hills we suddenly seem remarkably sane and stable. And there was a certain vicious catharsis to answering "Yes," when asked by Beth if he sounded like a particularly awful character as she picked a pointless fight. Having this televised nightmare to remind me how beautiful -even if occasionally frustrating- my reality is made the night a little easier, but I'd still rather it just didn't exist.
I would have still felt sour about the experience of being subjected to the show had we not followed it with the current episode of Family Guy, which spoofs the hills. Family Guy treated it with all the delicacy and tenderness that it treats any subject. If watching the hills made me feel better about my own small social sphere, it made me cringe for humanity in general. If this is a hit show, if people in droves are choosing to watch this eagerly, how can one have faith in our fellow man? Looking around the world today, it is easy to bump up against these terrifying dilemmas ("How can people do such horrible things?"), but then Family Guy dives in to save us. The brutal satire reminded the self-important jerk inside me that perhaps my negative reaction to the hills is the point. The show is done in arch seriousness, but everyone watching is in on the joke: no one watches it thinking these are likable people. Some are more likable than others, but all of them are kind of walking caricatures of our pop-generic obsessions and desires. Family Guy reminds that we all know this beast is absurd, that even Lauren Conrad is in on the joke, voicing herself as a character in the episode even as they present her as dating a (literal) dog (culminating with a scene of her dragging her ass around on a rug after Brian gives her worms) and lampooning the emptiness of the show.
In the end, rather than ruining my night and deepening our divide and prolonging our disagreement, the hills (I am still not going to capitalize it) actually salved the wound and gave us a common horror to be happy we weren't a part of. This isn't to say I plan on watching it again or that I don't think it should be cancelled, but you know me: always looking on the bright side.
SOMEONE made me watch it last night, though I've been told I'm not allowed to tell anyone that he watches it because he is appropriately ashamed of this vile habit, but why would I sit through such torture if I can't make fun of it afterwards? Well, I'm nicer than I look, so I'll let this person remain nameless. Let's call him "Beth". Beth and I had gotten in a squabble and there was that moment where you feel like you've already had all the arguments a couple can manage and that you are doomed to repeat ridiculous gripes forever and ever. In that shortsighted moment, it is easy to blind yourself with all the ways that you and this other person are incompatible and also question whether or not you really are just a jackass. Maybe I'm retarded and don't know how to manage a relationship. Maybe I don't know how to communicate my feelings effectively or listen when someone else is trying to communicate them to me. Maybe we just don't work together...
None of this is true. I know that and even when feeling frustrated facing the picked scab of slow healing old fights, I still know that we've got a real good thing going on. I'm no fatalist and know better than to wallow too deeply or believe that moments of frustration are doomed to be eternal, but it is nice sometimes to have something external to your situation remind you how good you've got it.
When Beth wanted to quit talking and watch the hills, you can (if you have ever met me) imagine the look I shot in his direction. It was somewhere between over-my-dead-body and i-dare-you-to-try. Watching the hills isn't something you should wish on your worst enemy, much less someone you love. Had there been someone else to protect from this blight, I might have stood strong but he made an impassioned plea and I relented.
If you've never seen the hills, don't. It is a bunch of horrible vapid people who do horrible vapid things. Actually, that is being generous: the cast is entirely RealDolls and motorized mannikins. The purported main character, Lauren, almost comes across as human and occasionally says things that make sense. The worst people in the show are heidi and spencer. She is on the show because she is pretty. She looks like she has escaped from the Playboy Mansion and and flounces around with layered blonde extensions and a pouty, perpetually surprised/confused look. And why not? spencer doesn't make any sense. There is no reason he should be on television. She is at least pretty. He is not, and while she isn't particularly likable, her abject idiocy allows for occasional flashes of unintended humor. He isn't even funny. This is the second episode of the show I have ever seen, but just that small snippet leaves an indelible bad taste in the mouth towards this couple and him in particular. In this episode, the two are going through couples counseling. The counselor winces as she listens to their idiocy. heidi is flipping out over a bartender who he flirts with and who is sending him text messages and squares off against this jezebel when she and her brunette gang step to her blonde fembot gang at a club. All of them come across as stupid monkeys dancing in front of a camera, but the brunette wins the round by pointing out that at the end of the day, heidi is still dating a douche bag who hits on other girls and always will.
The other main drama of the show was some awful girl (named "Jayde") with bad collagen injections and a bottle of Jaegermeister acting like an idiot over a dumb boyfriend. But I'm not really here to give a play-by-play recap; I have no desire to recreate this horror. Watching all this absurdity though, suddenly my own relationship seemed incredibly healthy. We get in fights and sometimes silly fights and sometimes the same silly fights over and over, but there is no way either of us is ever going to be that disagreeable. The show's value seems to be in showing what is purported to be a fabulous life (glamor, parties, clothes, etc.) and making it look like the worst hell imaginable. And not even a fun sort of wretched hell. Lost occasionally looks like hell, being stuck on some time-travel island with an atomic bomb and people trying to kill you and your friends, but it is an interesting dynamic hell. The hell that is the hills just looks so painfully boring. They make leisure and money look awful.
And then there is what they do for relationships. If they make hanging out in bars look painful, they make dating look like pure torture (and not the waterboarding kind, but the ripping-off-fingernails-with-pliers kind). Sitting watching these... people(?) after having my own spat suddenly made me appreciate what I've got. We (like every couple) come up with some stupid things to fight about, but contrast against this alternate universe displayed in the hills we suddenly seem remarkably sane and stable. And there was a certain vicious catharsis to answering "Yes," when asked by Beth if he sounded like a particularly awful character as she picked a pointless fight. Having this televised nightmare to remind me how beautiful -even if occasionally frustrating- my reality is made the night a little easier, but I'd still rather it just didn't exist.
I would have still felt sour about the experience of being subjected to the show had we not followed it with the current episode of Family Guy, which spoofs the hills. Family Guy treated it with all the delicacy and tenderness that it treats any subject. If watching the hills made me feel better about my own small social sphere, it made me cringe for humanity in general. If this is a hit show, if people in droves are choosing to watch this eagerly, how can one have faith in our fellow man? Looking around the world today, it is easy to bump up against these terrifying dilemmas ("How can people do such horrible things?"), but then Family Guy dives in to save us. The brutal satire reminded the self-important jerk inside me that perhaps my negative reaction to the hills is the point. The show is done in arch seriousness, but everyone watching is in on the joke: no one watches it thinking these are likable people. Some are more likable than others, but all of them are kind of walking caricatures of our pop-generic obsessions and desires. Family Guy reminds that we all know this beast is absurd, that even Lauren Conrad is in on the joke, voicing herself as a character in the episode even as they present her as dating a (literal) dog (culminating with a scene of her dragging her ass around on a rug after Brian gives her worms) and lampooning the emptiness of the show.
In the end, rather than ruining my night and deepening our divide and prolonging our disagreement, the hills (I am still not going to capitalize it) actually salved the wound and gave us a common horror to be happy we weren't a part of. This isn't to say I plan on watching it again or that I don't think it should be cancelled, but you know me: always looking on the bright side.
Thursday, April 23, 2009
diving into the future...
I've just made two technological leaps, though both feel like unwilling concessions rather than great jumps forward.
First, I joined SecondLife, the online digital world. This makes me feel like an uber geek, and not entirely in a good way. I don't have the time or patience for really getting into it, or at least those time when I would, like when I'm out at sea, I won't have internet access. And I know this isn't a thing you tip-toe into. Dive in head first and mean it, or why bother? "Why bother?" indeed, but the answer to why I am bothering is as an attempt to feel out this digital world for a little bit as research for the story I am attempting rather than any desire to dive into another online social network thingy. I'm finding myself both amazed and frustrated with the technology of it. In my mind, the graphics were going to be crisper and the interface more fluid. I suppose for what it is, it is impressive, but at this point the bar is so high. I want the graphics to be as crisp as the newest video games, then maybe I might be in danger of succumbing to its charms, ceasing to be an impassive observer and becoming a fully invested denizen. It is a long way from that.
Second, I got an iphone. This feels too bandwagon for me to really be comfortable with it, but damn it is a pretty little piece of machinery. I had the AT&T tilt, which is hunk of junk. I mean complete crap, and crap that I payed too much for thinking I needed a fancy functional little gadget that would do everything when I was traveling. I read a glowing review on cnet and will never trust their opinion again. So I'm relieved to finally have a machine that works. The ubiquity of the iphone, especially here in New York, is a little bit nauseating, but I've never been one to refuse a pleasure simply because its popularity borders on vulgar.
First, I joined SecondLife, the online digital world. This makes me feel like an uber geek, and not entirely in a good way. I don't have the time or patience for really getting into it, or at least those time when I would, like when I'm out at sea, I won't have internet access. And I know this isn't a thing you tip-toe into. Dive in head first and mean it, or why bother? "Why bother?" indeed, but the answer to why I am bothering is as an attempt to feel out this digital world for a little bit as research for the story I am attempting rather than any desire to dive into another online social network thingy. I'm finding myself both amazed and frustrated with the technology of it. In my mind, the graphics were going to be crisper and the interface more fluid. I suppose for what it is, it is impressive, but at this point the bar is so high. I want the graphics to be as crisp as the newest video games, then maybe I might be in danger of succumbing to its charms, ceasing to be an impassive observer and becoming a fully invested denizen. It is a long way from that.
Second, I got an iphone. This feels too bandwagon for me to really be comfortable with it, but damn it is a pretty little piece of machinery. I had the AT&T tilt, which is hunk of junk. I mean complete crap, and crap that I payed too much for thinking I needed a fancy functional little gadget that would do everything when I was traveling. I read a glowing review on cnet and will never trust their opinion again. So I'm relieved to finally have a machine that works. The ubiquity of the iphone, especially here in New York, is a little bit nauseating, but I've never been one to refuse a pleasure simply because its popularity borders on vulgar.
Saturday, April 18, 2009
Friday, April 17, 2009
Thursday, April 16, 2009
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
sledding day...
taken while climbing to the top of a mountain on Unalaska with Mary and Doug to go snowboarding. Ok, actually they were going to snow board, I was going to slide down in one of those plastic sled things that looks like a garbage can lid. Taken back in February.
Thank you, Susan Boyle
If you haven't already seen her, go now. Wow.
I would normally never blog about anything that I see as a headline on MSN, but today needed some good news after getting off to a frustrating start. I read two descriptions of this performance before seeing it, and both of them drummed up the cynicism of the judges and audiences before Ms. Boyle starts singing. That is fair enough, since it is obvious that no one really thinks she is going to pull it off, but watching the clip, with perhaps the exception of the girl in the audience with too much eye-liner who we are treated with a close up of as she sneers, it appears more that people were terrified that this woman might fail, not hoping for it. It is a treat to see her succeed so magnificently, but also reassuring that the look on Simon's face before she began suggested that he didn't relish his role as dream smasher and like he was almost wincing with fear against what looked like a coming trainwreck that he was going to have to pick apart. I love that she was better than anyone expected, I love that no one could hate on her performance after she began even if they wanted to, but I love even more that it appears as if they didn't want to.
This frumpy little lady is too cute. I love her! I have never seen Les Mis or really wanted to, but now I do.
I would normally never blog about anything that I see as a headline on MSN, but today needed some good news after getting off to a frustrating start. I read two descriptions of this performance before seeing it, and both of them drummed up the cynicism of the judges and audiences before Ms. Boyle starts singing. That is fair enough, since it is obvious that no one really thinks she is going to pull it off, but watching the clip, with perhaps the exception of the girl in the audience with too much eye-liner who we are treated with a close up of as she sneers, it appears more that people were terrified that this woman might fail, not hoping for it. It is a treat to see her succeed so magnificently, but also reassuring that the look on Simon's face before she began suggested that he didn't relish his role as dream smasher and like he was almost wincing with fear against what looked like a coming trainwreck that he was going to have to pick apart. I love that she was better than anyone expected, I love that no one could hate on her performance after she began even if they wanted to, but I love even more that it appears as if they didn't want to.
This frumpy little lady is too cute. I love her! I have never seen Les Mis or really wanted to, but now I do.
Monday, March 09, 2009
What's so scary about a little kiss?
So I finally watched Y Tu Mama Tambien. People always assume I've seen it and when it came out, all my friends saw it. But I've put off seeing it. I didn't intentionally avoid it in the theater, but I miss most things in the theater unless Ben drags me there. Not that I don't like going to see movies, I do; but it just usually isn't what I'll chose to do unless someone else tips the decision that direction.
I have intentionally avoided it on video, however. Not that I haven't wanted to see it and on multiple occasions would have rented it except that I had read how most rental copies of it are edited and what is the point of seeing a movie that is famous for being a love story fantasy if it has been edited? Of course they will cut the best bits! Actually, who in hell wants to watch any edited movie? It is like reading an abridged book. Not that there are no stories out their which might benefit from well placed pruning, but books are abridged to make them shorter and easier to digest and movies are edited to make them tamer (and, if it is for tv, to make room for commercials). I knew that this cut was to make it less offensive and if I wanted a less offensive movie, I'd have picked one. So anyway, I've refused to watch this movie multiple times because I couldn't be sure to get the unedited version.
I remember now that I had refused to watch Ben's copy because a little questioning revealed it to be one of the chop shop versions, but I forgot this. I suppose I am glad I did forget, because I enjoyed watching it and otherwise would have continued my silent protest.
I was worried at the beginning of the movie when the quick disclaimer flashed by that it had been "edited for content and language". Yuck. And even with my poor language skills I was able to tell some of the language had been blurred, but it seemed more just for simplicity than prudishness. The cuss words were generalized or not completely literally translated (of course the cuss words are always the most familiar vocabulary for one like myself who only knows a little of a language), but who cares? They didn't blur the message and didn't really sanitize the story in that area. And at first I supposed they hadn't really edited the content that much. The movie opens with two naked people in bed and before the scene changes you see -soft, of course- a pecker, which is usually the first thing edited out of a movie. Male genitals are so terribly distressing to the idiots who rate movies. This isn't the last of the nudity either, male or female, and sexual acts are also shown, though rather as a side note that anything titillating.
Actually, the only way that I know this is a chopped version, even if it isn't a fully block-bustered bastard, is that the one thing which got so many panties in a wad and made the movie such an intriguing success was the one thing they cut out! The whole damn movie builds up to this love scene with both the boys and the woman. It builds and builds and then we get there, the crucial moment, during which the two guys kiss... except they don't. Here, they get back to the room, the chick begins making out with one of them... and cut! The morning after! The boys wake up looking at each other, but other than that we are left to just guess what has made them so awkward towards each other.
When this movie came out, the shared affair with the older woman wasn't the scandal but that the two male leads' friendship tipped over into the romantic at the climax with her. Every stupid interview with the actors asked them moronic questions about how awkward it must have been to kiss the other guy, which to their credit, they generally just brushed off. Two guys kissing shouldn't be a big fucking deal, but apparently it was and it got this movie tons of publicity and, truth be told, peaked my interest too. When it comes time to trim the movie down, for whatever fucking stupid reason they have, the kiss is the first thing to go. So we see the three leads naked, we see them urinate, we see at least partial sexual acts, but the two guys kissing is a shade too far. It is so fucking irritating.
Dean always complained that even in gay themed movies directed at gay audiences that you are more likely to see two men having sex than see them kiss. He got completely flustered and angry when we watched... damn, I can't remember the name of the movie. It is from Argentina and featured two bank robber lovers in their violent and sexual downward spiral. Completely out of character, I had suggested the movie when we went to pick something to watch. I can't remember the movie, but I remember the night because it was (at least before the movie) one of the most fun and silly nights ever with my friends. I was back in Charleston and rambling about with Dean, Michael, and Preot. We've all been friends for years but hadn't really all been together like that in a long time and all sort of queened out when we found a potted plant that someone had thrown out. It was actually pretty healthy, a very tall Diffenbachia with a few ratty leaves in a gallon pot and descending upon it, we started pruning leaves and propping it up and talking to it and about it like we were giving a make-over and as we walked away (carrying our new plant, I can't remember what we named it, Sheena maybe?) suddenly realized we had never been gayer in our whole lives. So we decided to keep the ball rolling and go pick out a gay movie and pop some gay popcorn and have a slumber party.
Burnt Money, that was the name of the movie. I had read something about it and I think it was the only gay movie that none of us had seen and it had gotten good reviews. I think Y Tu Mama Tambien had been suggested even though it wasn't a gay movie because of the dudes kissing, but also passed over because we had heard that scene was edited out in lots of rental copies. I totally loved Burnt Money, which was surprising because I am usually the one who complains that movies are too gorey or violent and this one was violent. Something about it I really liked, but it killed the fun mood for everyone else and at some point Dean pointed out how much sex there had been but no kissing. I think that the guys finally got their kiss towards the end of the movie and I think I argued just to be contrary, but he had a point. Tonight at least, he is right. More than sex between men, affection terrifies.
I have intentionally avoided it on video, however. Not that I haven't wanted to see it and on multiple occasions would have rented it except that I had read how most rental copies of it are edited and what is the point of seeing a movie that is famous for being a love story fantasy if it has been edited? Of course they will cut the best bits! Actually, who in hell wants to watch any edited movie? It is like reading an abridged book. Not that there are no stories out their which might benefit from well placed pruning, but books are abridged to make them shorter and easier to digest and movies are edited to make them tamer (and, if it is for tv, to make room for commercials). I knew that this cut was to make it less offensive and if I wanted a less offensive movie, I'd have picked one. So anyway, I've refused to watch this movie multiple times because I couldn't be sure to get the unedited version.
I remember now that I had refused to watch Ben's copy because a little questioning revealed it to be one of the chop shop versions, but I forgot this. I suppose I am glad I did forget, because I enjoyed watching it and otherwise would have continued my silent protest.
I was worried at the beginning of the movie when the quick disclaimer flashed by that it had been "edited for content and language". Yuck. And even with my poor language skills I was able to tell some of the language had been blurred, but it seemed more just for simplicity than prudishness. The cuss words were generalized or not completely literally translated (of course the cuss words are always the most familiar vocabulary for one like myself who only knows a little of a language), but who cares? They didn't blur the message and didn't really sanitize the story in that area. And at first I supposed they hadn't really edited the content that much. The movie opens with two naked people in bed and before the scene changes you see -soft, of course- a pecker, which is usually the first thing edited out of a movie. Male genitals are so terribly distressing to the idiots who rate movies. This isn't the last of the nudity either, male or female, and sexual acts are also shown, though rather as a side note that anything titillating.
Actually, the only way that I know this is a chopped version, even if it isn't a fully block-bustered bastard, is that the one thing which got so many panties in a wad and made the movie such an intriguing success was the one thing they cut out! The whole damn movie builds up to this love scene with both the boys and the woman. It builds and builds and then we get there, the crucial moment, during which the two guys kiss... except they don't. Here, they get back to the room, the chick begins making out with one of them... and cut! The morning after! The boys wake up looking at each other, but other than that we are left to just guess what has made them so awkward towards each other.
When this movie came out, the shared affair with the older woman wasn't the scandal but that the two male leads' friendship tipped over into the romantic at the climax with her. Every stupid interview with the actors asked them moronic questions about how awkward it must have been to kiss the other guy, which to their credit, they generally just brushed off. Two guys kissing shouldn't be a big fucking deal, but apparently it was and it got this movie tons of publicity and, truth be told, peaked my interest too. When it comes time to trim the movie down, for whatever fucking stupid reason they have, the kiss is the first thing to go. So we see the three leads naked, we see them urinate, we see at least partial sexual acts, but the two guys kissing is a shade too far. It is so fucking irritating.
Dean always complained that even in gay themed movies directed at gay audiences that you are more likely to see two men having sex than see them kiss. He got completely flustered and angry when we watched... damn, I can't remember the name of the movie. It is from Argentina and featured two bank robber lovers in their violent and sexual downward spiral. Completely out of character, I had suggested the movie when we went to pick something to watch. I can't remember the movie, but I remember the night because it was (at least before the movie) one of the most fun and silly nights ever with my friends. I was back in Charleston and rambling about with Dean, Michael, and Preot. We've all been friends for years but hadn't really all been together like that in a long time and all sort of queened out when we found a potted plant that someone had thrown out. It was actually pretty healthy, a very tall Diffenbachia with a few ratty leaves in a gallon pot and descending upon it, we started pruning leaves and propping it up and talking to it and about it like we were giving a make-over and as we walked away (carrying our new plant, I can't remember what we named it, Sheena maybe?) suddenly realized we had never been gayer in our whole lives. So we decided to keep the ball rolling and go pick out a gay movie and pop some gay popcorn and have a slumber party.
Burnt Money, that was the name of the movie. I had read something about it and I think it was the only gay movie that none of us had seen and it had gotten good reviews. I think Y Tu Mama Tambien had been suggested even though it wasn't a gay movie because of the dudes kissing, but also passed over because we had heard that scene was edited out in lots of rental copies. I totally loved Burnt Money, which was surprising because I am usually the one who complains that movies are too gorey or violent and this one was violent. Something about it I really liked, but it killed the fun mood for everyone else and at some point Dean pointed out how much sex there had been but no kissing. I think that the guys finally got their kiss towards the end of the movie and I think I argued just to be contrary, but he had a point. Tonight at least, he is right. More than sex between men, affection terrifies.
Saturday, March 07, 2009
Looking under...
turning over stones
is the first skill
i was taught.
i know that
snakes and black
widows wait beneath.
that is why
rocks are rolled.
we look for
dangerous things to
take our breath.
that, and rollie
polies to make
us laugh.
is the first skill
i was taught.
i know that
snakes and black
widows wait beneath.
that is why
rocks are rolled.
we look for
dangerous things to
take our breath.
that, and rollie
polies to make
us laugh.
Thursday, March 05, 2009
Nightwood and Giovanni's Room: the dangers of the search for hidden messages in recommended fiction...
Language is meant to communicate, to get a point across. Perhaps also sometimes just to get something out, to express, to release some of that steam that builds up behind our eyes. We can be utilitarian in our language, try to say exactly what we mean in direct tones with simple meaning, but more often than not our feelings are more complicated than that. This is where we get into art and language and communication can get refined, yet also garbled. As we shape and express what we mean through whatever medium our art finds its expression in, it isn't usually just a simple single meaning that comes out. Had we meant a simple single meaning, why bother with art? Just make a sign and hang your message where the target will read it, or just say it straight out. As our intentions and feelings become more complex than just simple cause and effect, so too our forms of expression necessarily communicate complex feelings and messages. Of course, once it leaves our mind and enters the corporeal world, it isn't only up to the artist as to the meaning. We put what we can into something we create, but then the person who comes upon it takes from it according to what they see and what they've brought. It isn't only the creation of the art which completes it, it is also in the viewing. Finding a receptive audience is a talent in and of itself.
I'm prone to forget that everyone in an audience doesn't see the same work. Reading a book that hits on something I've felt but not known how to express always makes me want to share it with friends. I want to share what I've found, I want to discuss it with others, I want to dig in deeper. Some of this is just wanting to compare what we find and trying to see through different eyes. Some of it is just social and wanting to share things. Of course, sometimes there is the feeling that someone has communicated something that I couldn't or hadn't been able to before and sharing a reading feels like a way to let me make more sense to others: if they read this, they will understand what I mean, how I feel!
But we all read differently and each text has many messages. Coming from different directions, relating to different characters, we do not always find the same clarity in the same texts as our friends. Why am I reflecting on this now? Because I just read Nightwood.
There is something intriguing in the title, and I love the author's name. Djuna Barnes. I seem to have a certain predilection for names beginning with "Dj". I really wish I knew some Djunas and Djangos. I'm getting off track, just saying that there has been something compelling about the book that would have eventually pulled me to it, but I read it on recommendation. Ben had told me about it before and I had meant to pick it up and hadn't, so I finally decided to grab it off the shelf to be part of the traveling library that helps make this floating incarceration feel productive and less like a prison sentence. It was finally the right time to read it.
That it was the right time to read it was made all the more clear by Ben looking for it on the shelf and growling when he realized that I had taken it when he wanted to double check his remembrance of a passage for some of his commentary in his Facebook "25 things". Not that the right time to read it was when someone else wanted it (I'm not that spiteful, really) but rather that having read his comments on it and realizing how big an impact it had made on him brought it to the front of my mind and made it something that I wanted to read now. It was already in my mind and he had asked me to read it before; now the time was right to read it.
I think this also set me up for a certain confusion. Going into a book looking for someone you already know is a mission fraught with danger. We end up putting too much of our friends into the characters or too much of the characters into our friends and sometimes if we aren't careful we can distort and damage our reading.
This is particularly difficult for me. I'm an avid reader, but a brutal one. Even as I hated book reports in school, I've grown up doing one after another as a hobby. As anyone who has read much at all of what I write here knows, I've got strong opinions and a tendency to share them. I tend towards gushing or demolishing as my whims take me and often enough both about different aspects of the same thing. This is all good and well when it is just me talking about my experience with a piece of art, but what about when this is a thing you approached because it is emblematic for someone you love?
At the moment, I feel as if I am sort of through the looking glass, looking at the reverse of a scene I've been in before. On the other side of the mirror, I'm the one presenting the book which meant so much to me, so colored my world outlook that I felt compelled to share it and then eagerly awaited for it to be read and find myself understood and closer than ever. Of course, this is not how it worked out. I handed Ben Giovanni's Room, as I had handed it to friends before and as it had been handed to me. I devoured it in one night when I got it, reading as the remnants of a hurricane blew past where I waited it out in a safe inland retreat, crying tears openly (which is no great feat now, as I've become a little looser with my emotions and like a good cry anytime a book or movie warrants it, but then I was an uptight control freak who refused such silly human indulgences) and feeling destroyed and devastated by the book, but also hopeful. The book could be so tragic because there was this beautiful love story, that even if this love was doomed, the fact that it could exist, that it could be written down, that this story could make people cry was breathtaking to me. I felt like it was giving me permission to fall in love if I found it. Mason and Liz had made me read it, and I had made Michael read it (don't tell Liz, he still has her copy. I had to find an identical edition to replace it for her.) and made John read it and I don't know how many other people I forced it on. But we were all friends, in various states of tortured love (or not love). When I handed it to Ben, I handed it to someone I was in love with, who I was dating.
You may not know this, but significant others don't always take away the same thing from a tortured love story that you did when you read it years ago and lonely and single. The story told my younger self of the possibility for love and passion; to someone already in love it warns of tragedy and hopelessness. So when he finally read it, Ben seemed somewhat horrified. Why did I want him to read that story? What was I trying to say? I was so flabbergasted that I didn't really know how to respond. Wasn't it beautiful? He said it was sad. Of course it was sad, and beautiful too, but because it wasn't just a book he was reading, rather a message from me, he couldn't just breathe in the beautiful. He went into it looking for me and probably also himself in relation to me and then he finds two people destroyed by each other and the society around them. They fall profoundly in love, and one becomes more jealous and desperate and falls to pieces before being executed and the other retreats in fear and grasps for traditional roles before falling haunted into exile. Was this what I saw as an ideal relationship? Was this how I saw us?
No and no, of course, but it is impossible to take in something brought to us by someone singing its praises and saying how much it has influenced who they are without looking for them in it, and also perhaps a little of what this says about how we fit into their life. So now it is my turn, and I try to look back through and remember his bafflement and then mine too.
At the beginning, I really liked Nightwood. The descriptions are incredibly rich and there is this strangely detailed breakneck pace racing your through a bizarre, but detailed background. You fly straight through one generation in no time. In an odd way, the laying of the groundwork reminded me of Amelie.
I shouldn't have said "At the beginning." I liked the book, when I backed away from my personal quest of finding Ben and I in it. It is a beautiful book and the characters are vivid and compelling. But I've a vicious critic of books and characters. I always have been and not in a particularly generous or forgiving way. When my mother would watch soap operas when I was a kid, I remember thinking how stupid everyone it is was. If they would just explain themselves instead of weaving these complicated lies their lives would be so much easier. I've gotten a little more understanding as I've aged, but only a little bit. And as much as I relish giggling at drama in real life, I've got a low tolerance for feeling like it has been cultivated, in real life or written worlds. I suppose this was my great intolerance with soap operas: there wasn't actually any drama except what was actively cultivated by all these vapid people. They had no real problems, just made some and carefully coached them along.
I don't mean to be so dismissive; Nightwood was certainly not Days of Our Lives. The writing is lush, the characters compelling and vivid and believable. Still, there is a certain flavor of tortured love that I don't really love that you can find in here. Doomed love, I can handle, but just plain old tortured love doesn't really do it for me. There is this feeling that to a certain extent the tortured want their love to tortured, that by traumatizing it that it becomes more real or something. This doesn't inspire sympathy in me, it makes me want to pull my hair out and scowl.
If you've read this book, you are probably scowling at me now, wondering why I'm so dismissive and hostile. As I said earlier, Nightwood is not a soap opera, it is a beautiful book. The characters tug and tear at one another and talk over each other trying to make themselves heard, and there is a terrible lucidity in it all. Just reading the book, unburdened by personal association, I'd see that. I'd be more forgiving and gentle to each of the characters, because I wouldn't assume at the start that I was any of them. If Ben found himself in this book, then wouldn't I also be there too, because surely I'm in any story he is in, right? I rail against silly romanticism muddling the thinking and blurring meanings, but damn if I'm not guilty of the crimes I accuse.
It is still difficult not to ask who in the book am I when Ben reads it. If-we-were-who-would-we-be is my favorite game anyway. It just gets loaded when you think someone else has played it already and sees you hiding somewhere in a text. Who am I when I read it and do we think the other person sees us the same person? Who are they? And do we see them as that person because we like that character or is this an indictment?
I assume that there are two choices for who we are, since in the book there are two main lovers: Nora and Robin. There is also the interloper, Jenny, but we'll assume as a given that neither of us could be this character; the implications would just be too ugly to contemplate. I'd assume that Ben sees himself as Nora, but I have a hard time imagining that he sees me as Robin, even if I do like going out drinking and wandering through the night. Of course, comparing yourself to characters is an imperfect game. And only a game. I, nor you, are the the characters in the stories we read.
I assume this is the same mistake he made when he read us in Giovanni's Room. I didn't love the book because I thought I was either David or Giovanni. I love the whole book, the whole story, and listening in on their conversations and the indictments cast against them by other characters, I found things explained that helped me understand better what I was feeling and how to navigate in the world. I didn't look to it as a plan for success or what my ideal love life would look like. It informed my world view; it didn't replace it. I wonder that that was the miscommunication when I shared this with Ben: he went in looking for us or a message from me to him.
Now I find myself fighting this same instinct with Nightwood. Even knowing this is a mistake and not why Ben told me about the book and wanted me to read it, I still couldn't help looking for us in it and being irrationally critical of the characters, thinking "I would never do that!" So I back up a little, relax, try again.
The writing is so beautiful it leaves me jealous. Even not imagining myself as the characters, they still irritate me somewhat, though flashes of brilliance shine through in their speeches. The character of the doctor is of particular interest (had this book not been recommended by a lover, he is the character I would have picked as myself: meddlesome, know-it-all, talkative). Interestingly enough, both of our emblematic books are set in Paris amongst gay expatriates and in roughly the same time period.
Perhaps I've written in enough circles about all this. I've just had to coach myself out of this trap and back into (somewhat) objective readership.
I'm prone to forget that everyone in an audience doesn't see the same work. Reading a book that hits on something I've felt but not known how to express always makes me want to share it with friends. I want to share what I've found, I want to discuss it with others, I want to dig in deeper. Some of this is just wanting to compare what we find and trying to see through different eyes. Some of it is just social and wanting to share things. Of course, sometimes there is the feeling that someone has communicated something that I couldn't or hadn't been able to before and sharing a reading feels like a way to let me make more sense to others: if they read this, they will understand what I mean, how I feel!
But we all read differently and each text has many messages. Coming from different directions, relating to different characters, we do not always find the same clarity in the same texts as our friends. Why am I reflecting on this now? Because I just read Nightwood.
There is something intriguing in the title, and I love the author's name. Djuna Barnes. I seem to have a certain predilection for names beginning with "Dj". I really wish I knew some Djunas and Djangos. I'm getting off track, just saying that there has been something compelling about the book that would have eventually pulled me to it, but I read it on recommendation. Ben had told me about it before and I had meant to pick it up and hadn't, so I finally decided to grab it off the shelf to be part of the traveling library that helps make this floating incarceration feel productive and less like a prison sentence. It was finally the right time to read it.
That it was the right time to read it was made all the more clear by Ben looking for it on the shelf and growling when he realized that I had taken it when he wanted to double check his remembrance of a passage for some of his commentary in his Facebook "25 things". Not that the right time to read it was when someone else wanted it (I'm not that spiteful, really) but rather that having read his comments on it and realizing how big an impact it had made on him brought it to the front of my mind and made it something that I wanted to read now. It was already in my mind and he had asked me to read it before; now the time was right to read it.
I think this also set me up for a certain confusion. Going into a book looking for someone you already know is a mission fraught with danger. We end up putting too much of our friends into the characters or too much of the characters into our friends and sometimes if we aren't careful we can distort and damage our reading.
This is particularly difficult for me. I'm an avid reader, but a brutal one. Even as I hated book reports in school, I've grown up doing one after another as a hobby. As anyone who has read much at all of what I write here knows, I've got strong opinions and a tendency to share them. I tend towards gushing or demolishing as my whims take me and often enough both about different aspects of the same thing. This is all good and well when it is just me talking about my experience with a piece of art, but what about when this is a thing you approached because it is emblematic for someone you love?
At the moment, I feel as if I am sort of through the looking glass, looking at the reverse of a scene I've been in before. On the other side of the mirror, I'm the one presenting the book which meant so much to me, so colored my world outlook that I felt compelled to share it and then eagerly awaited for it to be read and find myself understood and closer than ever. Of course, this is not how it worked out. I handed Ben Giovanni's Room, as I had handed it to friends before and as it had been handed to me. I devoured it in one night when I got it, reading as the remnants of a hurricane blew past where I waited it out in a safe inland retreat, crying tears openly (which is no great feat now, as I've become a little looser with my emotions and like a good cry anytime a book or movie warrants it, but then I was an uptight control freak who refused such silly human indulgences) and feeling destroyed and devastated by the book, but also hopeful. The book could be so tragic because there was this beautiful love story, that even if this love was doomed, the fact that it could exist, that it could be written down, that this story could make people cry was breathtaking to me. I felt like it was giving me permission to fall in love if I found it. Mason and Liz had made me read it, and I had made Michael read it (don't tell Liz, he still has her copy. I had to find an identical edition to replace it for her.) and made John read it and I don't know how many other people I forced it on. But we were all friends, in various states of tortured love (or not love). When I handed it to Ben, I handed it to someone I was in love with, who I was dating.
You may not know this, but significant others don't always take away the same thing from a tortured love story that you did when you read it years ago and lonely and single. The story told my younger self of the possibility for love and passion; to someone already in love it warns of tragedy and hopelessness. So when he finally read it, Ben seemed somewhat horrified. Why did I want him to read that story? What was I trying to say? I was so flabbergasted that I didn't really know how to respond. Wasn't it beautiful? He said it was sad. Of course it was sad, and beautiful too, but because it wasn't just a book he was reading, rather a message from me, he couldn't just breathe in the beautiful. He went into it looking for me and probably also himself in relation to me and then he finds two people destroyed by each other and the society around them. They fall profoundly in love, and one becomes more jealous and desperate and falls to pieces before being executed and the other retreats in fear and grasps for traditional roles before falling haunted into exile. Was this what I saw as an ideal relationship? Was this how I saw us?
No and no, of course, but it is impossible to take in something brought to us by someone singing its praises and saying how much it has influenced who they are without looking for them in it, and also perhaps a little of what this says about how we fit into their life. So now it is my turn, and I try to look back through and remember his bafflement and then mine too.
At the beginning, I really liked Nightwood. The descriptions are incredibly rich and there is this strangely detailed breakneck pace racing your through a bizarre, but detailed background. You fly straight through one generation in no time. In an odd way, the laying of the groundwork reminded me of Amelie.
I shouldn't have said "At the beginning." I liked the book, when I backed away from my personal quest of finding Ben and I in it. It is a beautiful book and the characters are vivid and compelling. But I've a vicious critic of books and characters. I always have been and not in a particularly generous or forgiving way. When my mother would watch soap operas when I was a kid, I remember thinking how stupid everyone it is was. If they would just explain themselves instead of weaving these complicated lies their lives would be so much easier. I've gotten a little more understanding as I've aged, but only a little bit. And as much as I relish giggling at drama in real life, I've got a low tolerance for feeling like it has been cultivated, in real life or written worlds. I suppose this was my great intolerance with soap operas: there wasn't actually any drama except what was actively cultivated by all these vapid people. They had no real problems, just made some and carefully coached them along.
I don't mean to be so dismissive; Nightwood was certainly not Days of Our Lives. The writing is lush, the characters compelling and vivid and believable. Still, there is a certain flavor of tortured love that I don't really love that you can find in here. Doomed love, I can handle, but just plain old tortured love doesn't really do it for me. There is this feeling that to a certain extent the tortured want their love to tortured, that by traumatizing it that it becomes more real or something. This doesn't inspire sympathy in me, it makes me want to pull my hair out and scowl.
If you've read this book, you are probably scowling at me now, wondering why I'm so dismissive and hostile. As I said earlier, Nightwood is not a soap opera, it is a beautiful book. The characters tug and tear at one another and talk over each other trying to make themselves heard, and there is a terrible lucidity in it all. Just reading the book, unburdened by personal association, I'd see that. I'd be more forgiving and gentle to each of the characters, because I wouldn't assume at the start that I was any of them. If Ben found himself in this book, then wouldn't I also be there too, because surely I'm in any story he is in, right? I rail against silly romanticism muddling the thinking and blurring meanings, but damn if I'm not guilty of the crimes I accuse.
It is still difficult not to ask who in the book am I when Ben reads it. If-we-were-who-would-we-be is my favorite game anyway. It just gets loaded when you think someone else has played it already and sees you hiding somewhere in a text. Who am I when I read it and do we think the other person sees us the same person? Who are they? And do we see them as that person because we like that character or is this an indictment?
I assume that there are two choices for who we are, since in the book there are two main lovers: Nora and Robin. There is also the interloper, Jenny, but we'll assume as a given that neither of us could be this character; the implications would just be too ugly to contemplate. I'd assume that Ben sees himself as Nora, but I have a hard time imagining that he sees me as Robin, even if I do like going out drinking and wandering through the night. Of course, comparing yourself to characters is an imperfect game. And only a game. I, nor you, are the the characters in the stories we read.
I assume this is the same mistake he made when he read us in Giovanni's Room. I didn't love the book because I thought I was either David or Giovanni. I love the whole book, the whole story, and listening in on their conversations and the indictments cast against them by other characters, I found things explained that helped me understand better what I was feeling and how to navigate in the world. I didn't look to it as a plan for success or what my ideal love life would look like. It informed my world view; it didn't replace it. I wonder that that was the miscommunication when I shared this with Ben: he went in looking for us or a message from me to him.
Now I find myself fighting this same instinct with Nightwood. Even knowing this is a mistake and not why Ben told me about the book and wanted me to read it, I still couldn't help looking for us in it and being irrationally critical of the characters, thinking "I would never do that!" So I back up a little, relax, try again.
The writing is so beautiful it leaves me jealous. Even not imagining myself as the characters, they still irritate me somewhat, though flashes of brilliance shine through in their speeches. The character of the doctor is of particular interest (had this book not been recommended by a lover, he is the character I would have picked as myself: meddlesome, know-it-all, talkative). Interestingly enough, both of our emblematic books are set in Paris amongst gay expatriates and in roughly the same time period.
Perhaps I've written in enough circles about all this. I've just had to coach myself out of this trap and back into (somewhat) objective readership.
Wednesday, March 04, 2009
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