Well, for those of you who consult this blog periodically, and have noticed it recently somewhat devoid of any new content, you would be forgiven for thinking I had fallen off the face of the planet.
NOT SO.
I am busily working away at a new blog, devoted entirely to creative writing! Check it out: http://farthestworld.blogspot.com
I am very very happy about it. I mean, not all of it is gold, or whatever, but the mere fact that I am writing short stories, and consistently, and not entirely despising the finished products, is quite possibly the closest thing to an artistic dream come true that I have ever felt.
So please do read it, and don't hesitate to write comments about it! But be kind. Remember, I'm still a neurotic jew, and I develop complexes very easily!
Sunday, April 1, 2007
Monday, March 26, 2007
Some Literary (Self-)Criticism
So I'm not thrilled about my last post. I think, mostly on account of it being sort of journalistic, an artificial structure that I am not familiar with and cannot really handle well. But reading over it has gotten me thinking about a few things.
I won't remove it, first of all, because I feel that part of the appeal of blog-writing is its spontaneity, its extemporaneous quality. Things enter the mind and are published almost as quickly. This is both wonderful and atrocious - my prose here is more energetic and varied than in any other context, at the serious expense of editing and revision. Everything is a trade off.
So I will keep it as sort of an awkward testament to the Spirit of Blog. But in another sense I find it quite interesting. I attempted, especially towards the end of it, to play around with language, to effect a kind of stylistic simulacrum of decay. I think I failed abominably, but that's beside the point.
Or maybe it isn't. Perhaps the point that has me riled up, even minutely, is the sort of hack-neyed, ad hoc quality of the latter section. Using ellipsis to simulate ellision, broken spacing, omission of entire phrases to represent sections torn out or illegible. I mean, it has a very heavy-handed quality to it. Don't get me wrong, I don't give a damn about the piece, but what troubles me is the spirit behind it.
There's an amateurish approach to writing that seeks to elicit a particular response, be it comedic or emotional, without the use of subtletly or guile. The amateurish writer sits down and hammers out text with entire sections in bold face capitals, multiple exclamation marks, and abrupt caesuras. I shall attempt to demonstrate:
Judith SWERVED the car quickly away from the precipice!!! She was TOO LATE - the wheels spun out over the gorge and half the chassis began to GRIND into the - YAWNING PIT OF DEATH!!
Okay I'm obviously exaggerating here for effect. But imagine something along these lines, only toned down a bit in respect of its more superficial excesses. In all other respects, particularly in terms of grandiloquence, prolixity, verbosity, or whatever you want to call it, amateurish writing tries to grind and squeeze every drop of sentiment from the reader. There is no concern for style or grace, or the careful manipulation of context and language to produce a particular result.
Such writing is often called "masturbatory", a term I take quite seriously in that it has more than once been used to describe my own writing. What does it signify, aside from the obvious self-gratification? It is above all symptomatic of an author's profound and persistent disinterest in the reader - in his or her potential reactions or desires upon encountering your work. Naturally, it is patently impossible to tailor a written work to every possible taste; that is not my point, in the least. We must always write from our guts, from a point of interior strength and energy; we must always attempt to harness that fleeting, vaguely intuitive sensation of flow, beauty, artistry, and moment.
But there are times when we write exclusively for the pleasure that our own prose brings us. I have experienced the following phenomenon many, many times: I begin by writing something that I am convinced, just as the words grace the page, is pure gold. Don't be mistaken, I'm not confused by delusions of grandeur, but as I write I become nevertheless enthralled by my own use of language. However, as time progresses, and as the psychic distance between me and my own creation grows, deepens, widens, I become cold to it. Turns of phrase that I had previously considered brilliant become, well, increasingly mediocre. Average, tepid, stale, or worst of all - ineffectual.
The first moments of writing are the most self-serving and egoistic. The truly humble writer is one who can brave his (or her) own feeling of disgust at the garbage his fingers created, and return to the page again, and again, and again. Revision is the negation of ego. To create and then discard your work, heedless of quality, is little more than arrogance.
Yet, the whole situation is a bit more complex. That initial moment of ego, the narcissistic first-contact with the page, has in the past enabled me to overcome the horrible fear of failure that cripples all creative output. There is a huge danger associated with writing, and above all publishing. It is not at all surprising that so many writers become infuriated when their work is described as autobiographical. It is precisely this that I, as a writer, struggle to move away from. Writing is annihilation. What kind of power can someone have if they, in their creation, are always bounded to some essentialist, authorial self? The act of manipulating thought and language emerges from the ego, from whatever fractured and discursive "unity" of thought the mind can perceive itself as having. But for it to be of any merit, this art, it must separate itself severely from that point of origin, and delve so deeply into something foreign, even alien, that the point of contact between author and work is explosive and profoundly mystifying. The exposure of unity to difference is defined, in my mind, by mystery and wonder - and the best writing is precisely that which embraces the dissolution of stagnant forms.
In the end I need to find a productive harmony between my own persistent and inescapable ego. My vanity is absolute - there is no way to excise this self-serving element from an act of creation so intimately entangled with my own mind. What I can do, however, is struggle against the amateurish impulse to "just create", to hammer onto the page some brazen and childish thing - not in content, but in form, since I will always cherish the most immature of sentiments (laughter, absurdity, and irreverence). The best I can do, for now, is perhaps to take my own vain self-awareness - and all the ridiculous intensity of thought invested in the recognition of how wonderful I am, qua writer - and transform it into a meticulous self-awareness of the work of art. In simple terms: the less I think about myself, the more I can think about what I create.
And maybe, just maybe, in time I can find that precious space of wonder that is about neither the self, nor the art, but something more and deeper.
I won't remove it, first of all, because I feel that part of the appeal of blog-writing is its spontaneity, its extemporaneous quality. Things enter the mind and are published almost as quickly. This is both wonderful and atrocious - my prose here is more energetic and varied than in any other context, at the serious expense of editing and revision. Everything is a trade off.
So I will keep it as sort of an awkward testament to the Spirit of Blog. But in another sense I find it quite interesting. I attempted, especially towards the end of it, to play around with language, to effect a kind of stylistic simulacrum of decay. I think I failed abominably, but that's beside the point.
Or maybe it isn't. Perhaps the point that has me riled up, even minutely, is the sort of hack-neyed, ad hoc quality of the latter section. Using ellipsis to simulate ellision, broken spacing, omission of entire phrases to represent sections torn out or illegible. I mean, it has a very heavy-handed quality to it. Don't get me wrong, I don't give a damn about the piece, but what troubles me is the spirit behind it.
There's an amateurish approach to writing that seeks to elicit a particular response, be it comedic or emotional, without the use of subtletly or guile. The amateurish writer sits down and hammers out text with entire sections in bold face capitals, multiple exclamation marks, and abrupt caesuras. I shall attempt to demonstrate:
Judith SWERVED the car quickly away from the precipice!!! She was TOO LATE - the wheels spun out over the gorge and half the chassis began to GRIND into the - YAWNING PIT OF DEATH!!
Okay I'm obviously exaggerating here for effect. But imagine something along these lines, only toned down a bit in respect of its more superficial excesses. In all other respects, particularly in terms of grandiloquence, prolixity, verbosity, or whatever you want to call it, amateurish writing tries to grind and squeeze every drop of sentiment from the reader. There is no concern for style or grace, or the careful manipulation of context and language to produce a particular result.
Such writing is often called "masturbatory", a term I take quite seriously in that it has more than once been used to describe my own writing. What does it signify, aside from the obvious self-gratification? It is above all symptomatic of an author's profound and persistent disinterest in the reader - in his or her potential reactions or desires upon encountering your work. Naturally, it is patently impossible to tailor a written work to every possible taste; that is not my point, in the least. We must always write from our guts, from a point of interior strength and energy; we must always attempt to harness that fleeting, vaguely intuitive sensation of flow, beauty, artistry, and moment.
But there are times when we write exclusively for the pleasure that our own prose brings us. I have experienced the following phenomenon many, many times: I begin by writing something that I am convinced, just as the words grace the page, is pure gold. Don't be mistaken, I'm not confused by delusions of grandeur, but as I write I become nevertheless enthralled by my own use of language. However, as time progresses, and as the psychic distance between me and my own creation grows, deepens, widens, I become cold to it. Turns of phrase that I had previously considered brilliant become, well, increasingly mediocre. Average, tepid, stale, or worst of all - ineffectual.
The first moments of writing are the most self-serving and egoistic. The truly humble writer is one who can brave his (or her) own feeling of disgust at the garbage his fingers created, and return to the page again, and again, and again. Revision is the negation of ego. To create and then discard your work, heedless of quality, is little more than arrogance.
Yet, the whole situation is a bit more complex. That initial moment of ego, the narcissistic first-contact with the page, has in the past enabled me to overcome the horrible fear of failure that cripples all creative output. There is a huge danger associated with writing, and above all publishing. It is not at all surprising that so many writers become infuriated when their work is described as autobiographical. It is precisely this that I, as a writer, struggle to move away from. Writing is annihilation. What kind of power can someone have if they, in their creation, are always bounded to some essentialist, authorial self? The act of manipulating thought and language emerges from the ego, from whatever fractured and discursive "unity" of thought the mind can perceive itself as having. But for it to be of any merit, this art, it must separate itself severely from that point of origin, and delve so deeply into something foreign, even alien, that the point of contact between author and work is explosive and profoundly mystifying. The exposure of unity to difference is defined, in my mind, by mystery and wonder - and the best writing is precisely that which embraces the dissolution of stagnant forms.
In the end I need to find a productive harmony between my own persistent and inescapable ego. My vanity is absolute - there is no way to excise this self-serving element from an act of creation so intimately entangled with my own mind. What I can do, however, is struggle against the amateurish impulse to "just create", to hammer onto the page some brazen and childish thing - not in content, but in form, since I will always cherish the most immature of sentiments (laughter, absurdity, and irreverence). The best I can do, for now, is perhaps to take my own vain self-awareness - and all the ridiculous intensity of thought invested in the recognition of how wonderful I am, qua writer - and transform it into a meticulous self-awareness of the work of art. In simple terms: the less I think about myself, the more I can think about what I create.
And maybe, just maybe, in time I can find that precious space of wonder that is about neither the self, nor the art, but something more and deeper.
Sunday, March 25, 2007
True Journalism
Wouldn't it be fantastic to project ourselves into the future and retrospectively discover a post-apocalyptic newspaper article nestled in the obliterated remains of a once-magnificent city... an article like the following!
March 23, 2043
Giant Wolves Attack Park in Downtown Vancouver
by Naomi Blitzen
VANCOUVER - Three enormous wolves, each roughly half the size of a city block and about two stories tall, attacked a group of helpless parkgoers in Queen Elizabeth Park this morning. Twenty three people are reported dead, and at least another fourty-two were rushed to the nearby BC Children and Women's Hospital for immediate treatment. More than a dozen remain in critical condition.
The wolves appear to have been hiding in the Vandusen Botanical Garden, nearby to the west, and dashed into Queen Elizabeth Park at approximately 7:30am. Parkgoers were taken entirely by surprise, and most of the reported deceased belong to a Tai Chi group called Subtle Movements, which meets regularly on the south-western edge of the park.
"As soon as we saw these big [expletive deleted] wolves charging into the park - and I mean holy jesus they were roaring and snarling and I thought holy [expletive deleted] I'm going to die - well as soon as we saw them we just started running like all hell," reports one victim, Jim Basmuth, a superintendent in one of the nearby buildings. "Everyone just lost it and started screaming and tearing off and stepping over each other. I mean it was like total carnage."
The first four police officers to have arrived on the scene are also among the dead. "When officers Bartuzzi and Cannelli arrived there, they naturally began firing at the animals. I mean, we really don't have any training for this. They saw the giant wolves, and what are you supposed to do?" explained Police Constable Bernard Artaud at a press conference earlier this morning. "Of course, the wolves turned on them. They honestly didn't have a chance."
More officers arrived on the scene, and a perimeter was quickly set up around the park. Soon after, the military arrived with two tanks, several support helicopters, and a number of armored personnel carriers. According to numerous witness accounts, the wolves seemed entirely uninterested in the show of force around them. "They just sat down near each other and started, oh god, you know... munching," reported one witness. "The worst part," said another, ashen-faced, bystander, "was when they, jesus christ in heaven... when they started throwing the bodies in the air and, well, catching them."
The police and military perimeter was gradually tightened around the wolves. Large shock-transmitting weapons were mounted on trucks, for the purpose of stunning the enormous animals. Unfortunately, once the perimeter came to within 50 feet of the wolves, they began growling, stood to their feet, and simply bounded over the line of vehicles. Weapons fire from the military appears to have had no effect.
The wolves were last spotted heading down E 33rd Avenue towards the eastern edge of the city. The national guard has been contacted, and the entire city has been placed on high alert. A city-wide emergency bulletin was aired, urging all residents to remain indoors until the danger has been averted.
"I hate that I have to feel like a prisoner in my own home!" Complained Melissa Benins, who lives near the park where the incident ocurred. "I mean, how the hell did these wolves get into the city anyway?"
Officials believe the wolves swam in from Fraser river, to the south, and crept through the streets during the night. Driven by hunger, they attacked the first large cluster of people they found in the morning. Dr. Benjamin Wiscoff, a leading Caninologist at the University of British Columbia, commented that, "Wolves will not generally attack humans unless they are driven to it by severe hunger. It seems entirely reasonable that wolves of this size would have a very difficult time meeting their dietary needs, and so would be driven into the city sooner or later, out of necessity."
***************************
And another article -- scorched, frayed, ink faded, more recent yet worse for wear -- might reasonably be found underneath the twisted remains of an old newspaper dispenser. Its fragments could well read:
ay 14t , 043
Giant Wolves Continue to Plague Western Canada
by Betty Norbitz
VAN..OUV.R - Since the first attack many mon..s ago, so small by comparison to today's onslaught, the wolv..' numbers have continued to grow. Wolf sightings are a daily ocurrence, and attacks happen severa times a week. In Kelow a,
......... three hundred dead......................no reasonable expectation of retaliation
.......... small glimmer of hope ............. community pushed to the edge of despera.... ................. electrified a wolf water supply and brought one of th.. ..... down ..............
........................... much jubilation .................. .nfortunat.l.y, cut short, when the tow. hall .................. by an undetermine ....... of wolv.. .
More cynical observe.. ..............., "...... almost like ...... strange breed of wolf vengeance .........."
..S. Military forces ...... refuse ... offer assistance, owing to their own infestation of ...........
March 23, 2043
Giant Wolves Attack Park in Downtown Vancouver
by Naomi Blitzen
VANCOUVER - Three enormous wolves, each roughly half the size of a city block and about two stories tall, attacked a group of helpless parkgoers in Queen Elizabeth Park this morning. Twenty three people are reported dead, and at least another fourty-two were rushed to the nearby BC Children and Women's Hospital for immediate treatment. More than a dozen remain in critical condition.
The wolves appear to have been hiding in the Vandusen Botanical Garden, nearby to the west, and dashed into Queen Elizabeth Park at approximately 7:30am. Parkgoers were taken entirely by surprise, and most of the reported deceased belong to a Tai Chi group called Subtle Movements, which meets regularly on the south-western edge of the park.
"As soon as we saw these big [expletive deleted] wolves charging into the park - and I mean holy jesus they were roaring and snarling and I thought holy [expletive deleted] I'm going to die - well as soon as we saw them we just started running like all hell," reports one victim, Jim Basmuth, a superintendent in one of the nearby buildings. "Everyone just lost it and started screaming and tearing off and stepping over each other. I mean it was like total carnage."
The first four police officers to have arrived on the scene are also among the dead. "When officers Bartuzzi and Cannelli arrived there, they naturally began firing at the animals. I mean, we really don't have any training for this. They saw the giant wolves, and what are you supposed to do?" explained Police Constable Bernard Artaud at a press conference earlier this morning. "Of course, the wolves turned on them. They honestly didn't have a chance."
More officers arrived on the scene, and a perimeter was quickly set up around the park. Soon after, the military arrived with two tanks, several support helicopters, and a number of armored personnel carriers. According to numerous witness accounts, the wolves seemed entirely uninterested in the show of force around them. "They just sat down near each other and started, oh god, you know... munching," reported one witness. "The worst part," said another, ashen-faced, bystander, "was when they, jesus christ in heaven... when they started throwing the bodies in the air and, well, catching them."
The police and military perimeter was gradually tightened around the wolves. Large shock-transmitting weapons were mounted on trucks, for the purpose of stunning the enormous animals. Unfortunately, once the perimeter came to within 50 feet of the wolves, they began growling, stood to their feet, and simply bounded over the line of vehicles. Weapons fire from the military appears to have had no effect.
The wolves were last spotted heading down E 33rd Avenue towards the eastern edge of the city. The national guard has been contacted, and the entire city has been placed on high alert. A city-wide emergency bulletin was aired, urging all residents to remain indoors until the danger has been averted.
"I hate that I have to feel like a prisoner in my own home!" Complained Melissa Benins, who lives near the park where the incident ocurred. "I mean, how the hell did these wolves get into the city anyway?"
Officials believe the wolves swam in from Fraser river, to the south, and crept through the streets during the night. Driven by hunger, they attacked the first large cluster of people they found in the morning. Dr. Benjamin Wiscoff, a leading Caninologist at the University of British Columbia, commented that, "Wolves will not generally attack humans unless they are driven to it by severe hunger. It seems entirely reasonable that wolves of this size would have a very difficult time meeting their dietary needs, and so would be driven into the city sooner or later, out of necessity."
***************************
And another article -- scorched, frayed, ink faded, more recent yet worse for wear -- might reasonably be found underneath the twisted remains of an old newspaper dispenser. Its fragments could well read:
ay 14t , 043
Giant Wolves Continue to Plague Western Canada
by Betty Norbitz
VAN..OUV.R - Since the first attack many mon..s ago, so small by comparison to today's onslaught, the wolv..' numbers have continued to grow. Wolf sightings are a daily ocurrence, and attacks happen severa times a week. In Kelow a,
......... three hundred dead......................no reasonable expectation of retaliation
.......... small glimmer of hope ............. community pushed to the edge of despera.... ................. electrified a wolf water supply and brought one of th.. ..... down ..............
........................... much jubilation .................. .nfortunat.l.y, cut short, when the tow. hall .................. by an undetermine ....... of wolv.. .
More cynical observe.. ..............., "...... almost like ...... strange breed of wolf vengeance .........."
..S. Military forces ...... refuse ... offer assistance, owing to their own infestation of ...........
Sunday, March 11, 2007
What a Dream
Okay, so I pretty much just woke up after having the most amazing dream. It was a weird fusion of "Lost" and "Alice in Wonderland". It began with someone who looked remarkably like Hercules, from that live-action television show, knocking someone unconscious (which happens a lot in Lost), hurling them over a waterfall (and themselves bodily thereafter), crawling up the river bank onto the shore, hoisting the comatose body onto a shoulder, and tearing off into the jungle. Scene I!
And of course this was all supposed to be like the exciting and mysterious events happening to non-central yet nevertheless startlingly heroic characters somewhere else on the Island. (Aside: I write this energized from glorious dream-filled sleep, whilst listening to Berlioz' Dream of the Witches' Sabbath, which is so phenomenally appropriate to the impending contents of my dream that I am giddy with the awesome aesthetic wonderfulness of it all.)
So anyway, Hercules and captive, and quite possibly other runners-along (whose faces and identities remain somewhat ambiguous, but were undoubtedly heroic), find some kind of burrow with magical properties and dive headfirst into it. These people did everything with gusto! Anyhow, after diving underground, they become prisoners of some weird Cabbalistic underworld community with a strange ice queen. The details are a bit fuzzy, but I do recall stalactites, corridors, and frenetic dancing.
Okay, so anyway, cut to other characters. Scene II. These were children. I think a boy and girl of like 12 or 14 (which is where the dream became very Alice in Wonderlandish). Oh yeah, and there was a talking bushy white dog, with tremendous sagacity that the above children invariably ignored.
But the dream wasn't from their perspective per se. I think it sort of passed by them in third person, and then became first person, whereupon I, myself, became the hero. This was the really cool part. But anyway, I'll get to that.
So these kids are like wandering around this forest or swamp or field, the details aren't really clear, and they happen upon this crystalline tent structure, and of course step inside it. There's a throne sitting there, in the middle of this room, and the room is conjoined to another room by a constricting pink spiderweb-like mesh, that only small mole-like creatures can pass through, and they can only pass through it because they are carrying beautiful purple-pink flowers that, with that special breed of dream-omniscience, I knew were intoxicating and particularly special. And so, as the moles went to and fro through the mesh, the fibres would tremble and constrict and stuff, widening to let them by.
So, moving on, the kids are in this room, and are looking around and stuff. Then the aforementioned ice princess steps in and starts talking to them. About wonders, and duty, and how there is an exciting life for them through the tunnel. The kids get weirded out, but are of course naturally curious, and start to approach the tunnel. The unerringly sagacious dog steps in and says, "No, let me examine it first. It may not be safe." Which he tries to do, and is instantly snatched up by the weird mesh and transported to some strange subterannean prison, no doubt to be tortured and tickled into a hapless state of merely faithful, not sagacious, dog-servitude. The children, quite understandably, totally fucking flip out and make a dash for the exit, which is instantly blocked by a cloudy gossamer fabric, which is in fact only superficially gossamer and really quite strong on the microscopic, uber-magical, fibrous level. And it expands to fill the little gaps to the side and below, when the children try to squeeze around it.
And then, strangely enough, Hercules appears behind the mesh and starts pounding on it, to no avail. Much hysteria, much sobbing, and then end of scene.
Cut to ME! This is the cool part! So I'm in this weird maze of rooms and corridors, all underground, all dark and dank, all very seriously dangerous and potentially ready to FUCK YOU UP in horribly creepy and disturbing ways. Like, there were these teenagers, different people than the aforementioned kids (I think, if I wanted to make a plausible back-story, other hapless young travellers-about who fell into the Ice-Queen's trap and have wandered her black and heartless domain for many years, longing for home), who passed by these mirrors and were helplessly drawn towards them. They passed through them, only to step right back out... but always aged, different, sadder, frightened, a little bit closer to death. And always unable to mention what happened behind the mirror, or how long they had been there. And, perhaps strangest, was that the other people, after walking a bit and comforting their rejoined companion, would always step into another mirror a little further along, heedless of the obvious horrible fate that awaited them on the other side. What I loved about this dream, though, is how minimalist it was. I've had dreams like this in the past, but only like a fragment of the coolness, and instead of two or three people drawn into mirrors, it would be an infinite column of helpless souls, for whatever reason -- and this always precipitated a tired dream-nausea, the kind where you just get sick of the sheer endless mind-crunching repetition of the one particular dream-aspect that your brain has fixated on. Not so in this dream... it kept changing, one wondrous thing to the next!
Okay, so I wander through some more rooms, which frankly have kind of blurred and been forgotten (I am amazed I remember as much as I do), when I find myself in this long corridor. It's very narrow, and there are thick metallic doors with spikes and skull-holes and pointing things and leather straps and all manner of creepy looking materials. They practically SCREAM do not enter. I walk the length of the hall, and notice there are like six doors. Exactly six. I get to the end and there's a plaque on the wall that reads, quite clearly, "There is only one door that leads from this room." I was like, "Shit." Which one? They all look so evil! So I walk back a bit, thinking, "Fuck, this must be like some horrific nightmarish version of the Price is Right, and I gotta choose the right demonic door, or die." But then I think, no way man, that shit's for morons. I see a little panel between two of the skull doors, right in the middle of the room, and it seems slightly loose at the base, as if pulling away from the wall - so I kick it! Sure enough, it opens, revealing another corridor! YES!!!
I run through, and I swear to god I'm thinking to myself, "Man, I'm smarter than the average bear!" So this corridor runs about 15 feet before widening into a little rectangular alcove, and who do I meet there? MOTHER FUCKING DERRIDA! Only it's not true life-size Derrida, but a short gnome-ish replacement Derrida with the amazing mass of white hair and a tiny notepad. He is scribbling frantically on his notepad, and I'm thinking, "Holy shit, this dream is amazing, it has Derrida." So I stoop down and start talking to him, and of course he's clearly a nutter, and is writing out the letters of his name, which actually spelled something weird and vaguely Czech, like Huertek Seuzok, which frankly did not conflict at all with his being Derrida, and he was conducting some intense numerology on the letters of the name, whereby he added up all the alphabetical numbers corresponding to each letter, which produced something insanely beautiful or weird or inexplicable, and of course I kind of lost the thread of what he was going on about and kept wandering. But holy shit!
So then, honestly, my dream had this amazing cinematic brilliance to it. It CUT, like CHANGE SCENE, and I swear to god it switches to this image of a little garden in a field, with forest in the distance, and everything is obscured by this thick wavy hazy blue, as if there's like a dome of translucent energy hovering above me, or maybe it's because I'm inside the head of an encephalopod, but in any case the blue is really beautiful and surreal like this Japanese photo I once saw of tall spruce trees in winter, seen through a colour-filter. And it gets weirder! There are these little root-shaped holes in the soil, with rooty tendrils writhing above them, scattered all over the garden... and this army of carrots in the distance is charging and bounding towards the waiting tendrils, and they JUMP IN, and the perspective switches a bit to half-above, half-below ground, and I get to see the roots writhe up and into the carrots and then some rabbits or moles or whatever crawling up through the earth to snatch them, presumably for dinner.
WHICH IS EXACTLY WHAT HAPPENS.
Next scene: Dinner with strange, highly cultured, talking underground mammals! I am here in this beautifully ornate, lavish, GORGEOUS dining room, with a stunning silky table-cloth spread over a massive dark rich mahogany table, cabrioled legs with swirly densely carved patterns, and magnificent plates with shimmering designs. And my mouth is watering, because I know I'm here for dinner (oh yeah, and I need not mention that the end of the dining table vanishes into darkness... along with the fully illuminated room, which has walls, furniture, pictures.. it all just disappears into nothingness). So I'm just about to sit down and enjoy what will no-doubt be a splendid meal, shared with my rabbit-person friends, when one of them stops me and points to a picture on the wall, which is a picture of his family - all animals of some kind - enjoying their meal around this table. I instantly understand, though am a bit hurt: no people allowed at the rabbit dinner table. I feel a little sad, but they very kindly usher me into a smaller room with a much less ornate table. They join me for dinner, and the patriarch or top-bunny sits at the head, and starts telling me about some of the food, as I pick it up.
So I get these plastic tube-like things... I mean I think they were plastic, but maybe they were alabaster. I'm a little puzzled by them, but then I understand that they contain pure oyster flesh, which I suck down without much hesitation. A bit salty but otherwise good. I think I did vaguely recall being vegetarian, but I didn't want to offend my guests by refusing food.
Oh yeah, I forgot, right before being seated one of the rabbit-women tells me they're having breakfast... but I know for some reason that the time is 9:30pm. Which doesn't seem to bother them at all. So I ask them what they eat when they wake up, and this really throws them for a loop - so I sort of back off from the subject, not wanting to upset them.
Okay, back to the table and meal! What a wondrous feast! They brought out this platter of what looks like these kind of spade-shaped pastries, kind of dark, almost black in places, a bit lighter in others. Splotchy colour distribution, but with a nice floury texture. I grab one and start eating, and it's delicious! It's got a very subdued sweetness, kind of like Pain Sucré, but only more doughy and just overall tastier. Kind of dense but not overly filling. They informed me that they were called Sukroses, and they only served them at awkward or unpleasant dinners. I nodded happily, not seeming to care that this very probably referred to me.
There was another dish of similar looking pastries, only a bit larger and flatter, which were savory. They tasted a lot like baked Thyme pastry might taste... very delicious, but not sweet at all. I preferred the sweet ones, and took another.
And then I noticed the tablecloth. It had these complicated spiral patterns that were like holes in the cloth, but probably weren't in fact holes because, really, they covered the entire cloth and that would seriously disturb the structural integrity of the fabric, and plus they had this beautiful mosaic quality... very multi-colored and intertwining.
So the patriarch-bunny is standing across from me and smiling jovially. He says that I should trace my sensation into the fabric, and I do this while sucking down another oyster. Sure enough a little pattern traces itself into the cloth, imbued with my emotions and memory of the recent experience. He then explains that it takes them several hours to re-experience all the patterns, but I should try one! So, of course, I run my finger through one... it's really intricate and the pattern is a bit hard to follow, but gives me this really refreshing kind of water-swimming vibe.
And then I wake up! What a wonderful dream.
And of course this was all supposed to be like the exciting and mysterious events happening to non-central yet nevertheless startlingly heroic characters somewhere else on the Island. (Aside: I write this energized from glorious dream-filled sleep, whilst listening to Berlioz' Dream of the Witches' Sabbath, which is so phenomenally appropriate to the impending contents of my dream that I am giddy with the awesome aesthetic wonderfulness of it all.)
So anyway, Hercules and captive, and quite possibly other runners-along (whose faces and identities remain somewhat ambiguous, but were undoubtedly heroic), find some kind of burrow with magical properties and dive headfirst into it. These people did everything with gusto! Anyhow, after diving underground, they become prisoners of some weird Cabbalistic underworld community with a strange ice queen. The details are a bit fuzzy, but I do recall stalactites, corridors, and frenetic dancing.
Okay, so anyway, cut to other characters. Scene II. These were children. I think a boy and girl of like 12 or 14 (which is where the dream became very Alice in Wonderlandish). Oh yeah, and there was a talking bushy white dog, with tremendous sagacity that the above children invariably ignored.
But the dream wasn't from their perspective per se. I think it sort of passed by them in third person, and then became first person, whereupon I, myself, became the hero. This was the really cool part. But anyway, I'll get to that.
So these kids are like wandering around this forest or swamp or field, the details aren't really clear, and they happen upon this crystalline tent structure, and of course step inside it. There's a throne sitting there, in the middle of this room, and the room is conjoined to another room by a constricting pink spiderweb-like mesh, that only small mole-like creatures can pass through, and they can only pass through it because they are carrying beautiful purple-pink flowers that, with that special breed of dream-omniscience, I knew were intoxicating and particularly special. And so, as the moles went to and fro through the mesh, the fibres would tremble and constrict and stuff, widening to let them by.
So, moving on, the kids are in this room, and are looking around and stuff. Then the aforementioned ice princess steps in and starts talking to them. About wonders, and duty, and how there is an exciting life for them through the tunnel. The kids get weirded out, but are of course naturally curious, and start to approach the tunnel. The unerringly sagacious dog steps in and says, "No, let me examine it first. It may not be safe." Which he tries to do, and is instantly snatched up by the weird mesh and transported to some strange subterannean prison, no doubt to be tortured and tickled into a hapless state of merely faithful, not sagacious, dog-servitude. The children, quite understandably, totally fucking flip out and make a dash for the exit, which is instantly blocked by a cloudy gossamer fabric, which is in fact only superficially gossamer and really quite strong on the microscopic, uber-magical, fibrous level. And it expands to fill the little gaps to the side and below, when the children try to squeeze around it.
And then, strangely enough, Hercules appears behind the mesh and starts pounding on it, to no avail. Much hysteria, much sobbing, and then end of scene.
Cut to ME! This is the cool part! So I'm in this weird maze of rooms and corridors, all underground, all dark and dank, all very seriously dangerous and potentially ready to FUCK YOU UP in horribly creepy and disturbing ways. Like, there were these teenagers, different people than the aforementioned kids (I think, if I wanted to make a plausible back-story, other hapless young travellers-about who fell into the Ice-Queen's trap and have wandered her black and heartless domain for many years, longing for home), who passed by these mirrors and were helplessly drawn towards them. They passed through them, only to step right back out... but always aged, different, sadder, frightened, a little bit closer to death. And always unable to mention what happened behind the mirror, or how long they had been there. And, perhaps strangest, was that the other people, after walking a bit and comforting their rejoined companion, would always step into another mirror a little further along, heedless of the obvious horrible fate that awaited them on the other side. What I loved about this dream, though, is how minimalist it was. I've had dreams like this in the past, but only like a fragment of the coolness, and instead of two or three people drawn into mirrors, it would be an infinite column of helpless souls, for whatever reason -- and this always precipitated a tired dream-nausea, the kind where you just get sick of the sheer endless mind-crunching repetition of the one particular dream-aspect that your brain has fixated on. Not so in this dream... it kept changing, one wondrous thing to the next!
Okay, so I wander through some more rooms, which frankly have kind of blurred and been forgotten (I am amazed I remember as much as I do), when I find myself in this long corridor. It's very narrow, and there are thick metallic doors with spikes and skull-holes and pointing things and leather straps and all manner of creepy looking materials. They practically SCREAM do not enter. I walk the length of the hall, and notice there are like six doors. Exactly six. I get to the end and there's a plaque on the wall that reads, quite clearly, "There is only one door that leads from this room." I was like, "Shit." Which one? They all look so evil! So I walk back a bit, thinking, "Fuck, this must be like some horrific nightmarish version of the Price is Right, and I gotta choose the right demonic door, or die." But then I think, no way man, that shit's for morons. I see a little panel between two of the skull doors, right in the middle of the room, and it seems slightly loose at the base, as if pulling away from the wall - so I kick it! Sure enough, it opens, revealing another corridor! YES!!!
I run through, and I swear to god I'm thinking to myself, "Man, I'm smarter than the average bear!" So this corridor runs about 15 feet before widening into a little rectangular alcove, and who do I meet there? MOTHER FUCKING DERRIDA! Only it's not true life-size Derrida, but a short gnome-ish replacement Derrida with the amazing mass of white hair and a tiny notepad. He is scribbling frantically on his notepad, and I'm thinking, "Holy shit, this dream is amazing, it has Derrida." So I stoop down and start talking to him, and of course he's clearly a nutter, and is writing out the letters of his name, which actually spelled something weird and vaguely Czech, like Huertek Seuzok, which frankly did not conflict at all with his being Derrida, and he was conducting some intense numerology on the letters of the name, whereby he added up all the alphabetical numbers corresponding to each letter, which produced something insanely beautiful or weird or inexplicable, and of course I kind of lost the thread of what he was going on about and kept wandering. But holy shit!
So then, honestly, my dream had this amazing cinematic brilliance to it. It CUT, like CHANGE SCENE, and I swear to god it switches to this image of a little garden in a field, with forest in the distance, and everything is obscured by this thick wavy hazy blue, as if there's like a dome of translucent energy hovering above me, or maybe it's because I'm inside the head of an encephalopod, but in any case the blue is really beautiful and surreal like this Japanese photo I once saw of tall spruce trees in winter, seen through a colour-filter. And it gets weirder! There are these little root-shaped holes in the soil, with rooty tendrils writhing above them, scattered all over the garden... and this army of carrots in the distance is charging and bounding towards the waiting tendrils, and they JUMP IN, and the perspective switches a bit to half-above, half-below ground, and I get to see the roots writhe up and into the carrots and then some rabbits or moles or whatever crawling up through the earth to snatch them, presumably for dinner.
WHICH IS EXACTLY WHAT HAPPENS.
Next scene: Dinner with strange, highly cultured, talking underground mammals! I am here in this beautifully ornate, lavish, GORGEOUS dining room, with a stunning silky table-cloth spread over a massive dark rich mahogany table, cabrioled legs with swirly densely carved patterns, and magnificent plates with shimmering designs. And my mouth is watering, because I know I'm here for dinner (oh yeah, and I need not mention that the end of the dining table vanishes into darkness... along with the fully illuminated room, which has walls, furniture, pictures.. it all just disappears into nothingness). So I'm just about to sit down and enjoy what will no-doubt be a splendid meal, shared with my rabbit-person friends, when one of them stops me and points to a picture on the wall, which is a picture of his family - all animals of some kind - enjoying their meal around this table. I instantly understand, though am a bit hurt: no people allowed at the rabbit dinner table. I feel a little sad, but they very kindly usher me into a smaller room with a much less ornate table. They join me for dinner, and the patriarch or top-bunny sits at the head, and starts telling me about some of the food, as I pick it up.
So I get these plastic tube-like things... I mean I think they were plastic, but maybe they were alabaster. I'm a little puzzled by them, but then I understand that they contain pure oyster flesh, which I suck down without much hesitation. A bit salty but otherwise good. I think I did vaguely recall being vegetarian, but I didn't want to offend my guests by refusing food.
Oh yeah, I forgot, right before being seated one of the rabbit-women tells me they're having breakfast... but I know for some reason that the time is 9:30pm. Which doesn't seem to bother them at all. So I ask them what they eat when they wake up, and this really throws them for a loop - so I sort of back off from the subject, not wanting to upset them.
Okay, back to the table and meal! What a wondrous feast! They brought out this platter of what looks like these kind of spade-shaped pastries, kind of dark, almost black in places, a bit lighter in others. Splotchy colour distribution, but with a nice floury texture. I grab one and start eating, and it's delicious! It's got a very subdued sweetness, kind of like Pain Sucré, but only more doughy and just overall tastier. Kind of dense but not overly filling. They informed me that they were called Sukroses, and they only served them at awkward or unpleasant dinners. I nodded happily, not seeming to care that this very probably referred to me.
There was another dish of similar looking pastries, only a bit larger and flatter, which were savory. They tasted a lot like baked Thyme pastry might taste... very delicious, but not sweet at all. I preferred the sweet ones, and took another.
And then I noticed the tablecloth. It had these complicated spiral patterns that were like holes in the cloth, but probably weren't in fact holes because, really, they covered the entire cloth and that would seriously disturb the structural integrity of the fabric, and plus they had this beautiful mosaic quality... very multi-colored and intertwining.
So the patriarch-bunny is standing across from me and smiling jovially. He says that I should trace my sensation into the fabric, and I do this while sucking down another oyster. Sure enough a little pattern traces itself into the cloth, imbued with my emotions and memory of the recent experience. He then explains that it takes them several hours to re-experience all the patterns, but I should try one! So, of course, I run my finger through one... it's really intricate and the pattern is a bit hard to follow, but gives me this really refreshing kind of water-swimming vibe.
And then I wake up! What a wonderful dream.
Saturday, February 17, 2007
A Little Wayward Writing
It has only ocurred to me in retrospect how ridiculously (and unintentionally) full of sublimated Freudian imagery my previous post is. Kind of hilarious to me, now, that I look upon it. Incidentally, for anyone reading this blog through my Facebook feed, you won't get the full ASCII effect unless you visit the blogspot page.
Anyway, been a wretchedly long time since my previous post, and the remaining unrelated bits about my New York trip are rapidly becoming ancient history, though still well worth telling. Too bad that's not what I'm going to do today.
Was thinking about how writing, and language, and in particular English (for me, at least until I properly learn French), has this wonderful potential rhythm and cadence and lyricism, and how really rarely it is exploited in ordinary speech, and even your run of the mill generic prose. So I was thinking about trying my hand, absurdly, foolishly, self-indulgently, at crafting a little bit of, well, I suppose you might call it... poetry. But, bah, labels. They're not worth the paper they're printed on.
So today I just wanted to see if I could, you know, fool around with my own internal perception, my own "palatal" conception, of cadence, of rhythm, of flow and sonality.... and determine whether I can, perhaps with some luck, produce a fragment halfway... erhmmmm... well, you know what I mean. And, whatever you do, please don't take the following too seriously.
The Troll Who Lost His Way
There was a troll, once upon a day, who felt the ground upon his way, and in his act of feeling lost his trail through fleeting fitful glimpses of the ceiling, the dusty draughty fitful fleeting glimpses of sweet sky-filled ceiling, which wistful, wanton, wondrous misty sight that sailed into his eyes, went whither when it could and would, and did take from him his sight, said troll, now made unseeing, and he, unfeeling, left lonely listless leering bits of sadenned, madenned, hurt and tearing, bits all verging on the meaning of becoming ill and searing, all this felt while fraught in tarnished badlands, old and bleary, blistered weary, sadenned by the deadly dreary death-filled heath and hearthless fear-inducing blasted busted bested crested nightmarish nested homes of vicious, mongrel wispsy men and things all dead and scarry, snarly spiteful spitting acid seething creatures full of hate and bile, clinging long along the walls of crumbly cracked and splintered halls, and falling castles and towers tall, old things all, and always falling, down into the splintered bramble-crackly and fire-eaten, storm-wind beaten, wounded, wimpering, haunted, helpless, heathen bogs and fogs and windy paths 'twixt broken logs, down and down, he, sightless, fell, this trollish beast who meant no harm and by and by broke his arm, and leg, and teeth, and neck and back and tore his skin and split his limbs, and there and then upon a blackened, blasted, burned and wasted, sharp and painful mound of hay, he lay and lay and sighed and stayed.
Day in and out and out and in, the days passed long and harsh and thin, and man and woman, beast and bird, passed by the broken troll, now burned and bruised and beaten, all sick and sad and eaten, all lean and mean and all alone, they passed by him one and all, and built above him stone by stone, by wood and beams, by sweat and blood and tears and fear, a tower tall and great and wide, and step by step the tower rose, each step above the one before another testament to wealth and more, and prosperous kings and queens and lords gushed gold and gems and treasures for this tower that, above our troll, just grew and grew in fame and lore, but always in that place remained, beneath the dark and musty base, below the lowest stone and brace, a single, broken, unwanted troll, hurt and sick and all disdained, a troll who, one sad and distant day, his fingers down upon his trail, his mind and soul both torn and frail, glanced upwards till his eyes did fail, and then forever lost his way.
Well, there it is. I have no fucking idea what it means. Hope you liked it!
Anyway, been a wretchedly long time since my previous post, and the remaining unrelated bits about my New York trip are rapidly becoming ancient history, though still well worth telling. Too bad that's not what I'm going to do today.
Was thinking about how writing, and language, and in particular English (for me, at least until I properly learn French), has this wonderful potential rhythm and cadence and lyricism, and how really rarely it is exploited in ordinary speech, and even your run of the mill generic prose. So I was thinking about trying my hand, absurdly, foolishly, self-indulgently, at crafting a little bit of, well, I suppose you might call it... poetry. But, bah, labels. They're not worth the paper they're printed on.
So today I just wanted to see if I could, you know, fool around with my own internal perception, my own "palatal" conception, of cadence, of rhythm, of flow and sonality.... and determine whether I can, perhaps with some luck, produce a fragment halfway... erhmmmm... well, you know what I mean. And, whatever you do, please don't take the following too seriously.
The Troll Who Lost His Way
There was a troll, once upon a day, who felt the ground upon his way, and in his act of feeling lost his trail through fleeting fitful glimpses of the ceiling, the dusty draughty fitful fleeting glimpses of sweet sky-filled ceiling, which wistful, wanton, wondrous misty sight that sailed into his eyes, went whither when it could and would, and did take from him his sight, said troll, now made unseeing, and he, unfeeling, left lonely listless leering bits of sadenned, madenned, hurt and tearing, bits all verging on the meaning of becoming ill and searing, all this felt while fraught in tarnished badlands, old and bleary, blistered weary, sadenned by the deadly dreary death-filled heath and hearthless fear-inducing blasted busted bested crested nightmarish nested homes of vicious, mongrel wispsy men and things all dead and scarry, snarly spiteful spitting acid seething creatures full of hate and bile, clinging long along the walls of crumbly cracked and splintered halls, and falling castles and towers tall, old things all, and always falling, down into the splintered bramble-crackly and fire-eaten, storm-wind beaten, wounded, wimpering, haunted, helpless, heathen bogs and fogs and windy paths 'twixt broken logs, down and down, he, sightless, fell, this trollish beast who meant no harm and by and by broke his arm, and leg, and teeth, and neck and back and tore his skin and split his limbs, and there and then upon a blackened, blasted, burned and wasted, sharp and painful mound of hay, he lay and lay and sighed and stayed.
Day in and out and out and in, the days passed long and harsh and thin, and man and woman, beast and bird, passed by the broken troll, now burned and bruised and beaten, all sick and sad and eaten, all lean and mean and all alone, they passed by him one and all, and built above him stone by stone, by wood and beams, by sweat and blood and tears and fear, a tower tall and great and wide, and step by step the tower rose, each step above the one before another testament to wealth and more, and prosperous kings and queens and lords gushed gold and gems and treasures for this tower that, above our troll, just grew and grew in fame and lore, but always in that place remained, beneath the dark and musty base, below the lowest stone and brace, a single, broken, unwanted troll, hurt and sick and all disdained, a troll who, one sad and distant day, his fingers down upon his trail, his mind and soul both torn and frail, glanced upwards till his eyes did fail, and then forever lost his way.
Well, there it is. I have no fucking idea what it means. Hope you liked it!
Friday, February 9, 2007
The Metaphorical Submarine of Destiny
I suppose I should mention, to those who happened upon my earlier post concerning the inevitable disastrous collapse of my entire post-secondary education (most likely in a giantesque bonfire of elaborate and highly pretentious papers on Dante, being the most readily available source of kindling in the College of the Humanities), that in fact the situation HAS BEEN AVERTED. The large, metaphorical submarine that symbolizes my
**
***
*****
PRODIGIOUS LEARNING
*****
***
**
has narrowly missed the deep and frightening Underwater Rock Face of Much and Unwanted Scraping and Puncturing (aka FAILURE).
Here, I shall diagram it for you.
Before:
Now:
As it turns out, the cause of my spontaneous existential crisis -- which had me entirely convinced that I would not only fail to graduate, but live with my parents for the next thirty years, turn morbidly obese, become the first human to contract an STD by watching television, and slowly decay into a pile of wretched human misery -- was, wait for it, A TYPO. Yes, god bless them, the registrar's office mistakenly reported that the due date for my final transcript from Athabasca university was Feb. 15th. It is, in fact, May 1st.
This means I can continue along my happy little academic journey and become all the things I mentioned above, only with a DEGREE to stare up at wistfully as I pull another creamy Joe Louis from the nearby fridge with my extensible mechanical appendage grafted to my waist with high-tech sweat-resistent polymers. Golly, isn't the future just dazzling?
**
***
*****
PRODIGIOUS LEARNING
*****
***
**
has narrowly missed the deep and frightening Underwater Rock Face of Much and Unwanted Scraping and Puncturing (aka FAILURE).
Here, I shall diagram it for you.
Before:
#@
- - - - - PRODIGIOUS LEARNING #@ EVIL ROCK FACE
#@ (FAILURE)
Now:
- _
-_ #@
P #@ EVIL ROCK FACE (NOW THWARTED)
R #@
O
D
I
G
As it turns out, the cause of my spontaneous existential crisis -- which had me entirely convinced that I would not only fail to graduate, but live with my parents for the next thirty years, turn morbidly obese, become the first human to contract an STD by watching television, and slowly decay into a pile of wretched human misery -- was, wait for it, A TYPO. Yes, god bless them, the registrar's office mistakenly reported that the due date for my final transcript from Athabasca university was Feb. 15th. It is, in fact, May 1st.
This means I can continue along my happy little academic journey and become all the things I mentioned above, only with a DEGREE to stare up at wistfully as I pull another creamy Joe Louis from the nearby fridge with my extensible mechanical appendage grafted to my waist with high-tech sweat-resistent polymers. Golly, isn't the future just dazzling?
Wednesday, February 7, 2007
Cinema of the Future!
Well, it's been a week since my last post. Which probably means this blog thing has become, at least inadvertently, a weekly event. I mean, for good reason, what with my being in Ottawa, and the marked increase in interiority this seems to bring about. Gone flashing lights, hello endless winter of the soul! Hah.
What's happened? Well, a lot, really. I suppose I shouldn't be too unhappy, since where else but in Ottawa can you see someone biking in -20 degree temperature, at about midnight, with an accordion strapped across his chest? I wonder where he could possibly have been going?
MOST PLAUSIBLE SCENARIO POSSIBLE:
Tall, mustachioed gentleman, wearing a crushed purple velvet suit, hair all pomade-slick: "ORDER! ORDER! ACCORDIONS AT REST! Welcome all to Ottawa's first official Underground Marxist-Leninist Winter Accordion-Biker Festival!"
"HERE HERE!!"
"We are gathered here today, in this large abandoned government warehouse - with wheelchair access for Stevie -"
"HI STEVIE!!"
"to HERALD THE DESTRUCTION OF CAPITALISM! PLAY ON COMRADES! PLAY ON!"
But in all seriousness, there's a lot of stuff. It has ocurred to me that it is simply no longer viable to ramble on and on interminably, you know, factoring in as I have done (with complex mathematical and statistical measuring devices) the precise duration of a typical person's attention span. So, for a change, I will attempt henceforth to keep my rambling short, sweet, but considerably more frequent.
Wonder how that'll work out.
To begin (and end) today's ramble, for it is my intention to linger on the subject of New York until I've exhausted my supply of delicious memories (no, honestly, the food! the FOOD! if you could only eat these thoughts!), today's topic will be:
DREW'S MOVIE REVIEWS!
Well, I considered using the ever-more cutesy "REVIEWIES", but then felt the last shred of my masculinity disappearing, and so I didn't.
In New York it was my ambition, since it is truly the CITY OF LIGHT
(being all flashy and blinky and stuff, and did I mention I am particularly awed by all things shiny and flickering in nature? especially when they loom above you like tall, glimmering tombstones)
to attend as many excellent films of no fewer than 5 stars in quality.
Internal Philo-Art Snob: "You know, Andrew, that whole 'star' rating thing is entirely arbitrary, and stems from a bloated economic infrastructure designed to pander to the basest common-denominator in consumer gullibility, and in no way accurately reflects the inherent, and fundamentally subjective worth of a film"
Drew the Intrepid Movie Reviewer: I WILL NOT BE CULLED BY YOUR LIES!
Film, the First! (Please note, since films are by their nature full of excitement, this blog entry shall contain an abnormally high! quantity of exclamation marks)
Pan's Labyrinth (El Laberinto del Fauno)
by
Guillermo del Toro
This film truly requires no introduction. Or review, for that matter. Go see it if you like Spanish people, civil wars, gobs of fertility symbolism, subdued Christian allegory, and imaginative creatures with hand-eyes.
I was going to rate this film something like "SHALO-", you know, as kind of like an almost-complete "shalom", because I swear to g-d that word is easily six times funnier when I say it. Unfortunately, it sounded like "SHALLOW", which is utterly inaccurate for this film, so instead I'm gonna give it:
4/5 Giant Leaping Tortoises with Flaming Wings that Double as Portals to a Secret Dimension Full of Cake
Film, the Second!
The Departed
by
Martin Scorcese
Premise: Take the very very first time you ever played Cops and Robbers, as you fired your clickety plastic orange gun and shouted hysterical taunts you believed were totally representive of the way both cops and robbers spoke, especially to each other, like:
"I'M GONNA GET YOU!"
"DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE!!!!"
"Bzoo! Bzoo! Bzoo!"
"Pow! Pow! Pow!"
"I GOT YOU! I GOT YOU!"
"NO YOU DIDN'T! I HIT YOU FIRST!"
and then hone in on the nagging thought, steadily dawning on you, that, Gosh, if you really wanted you could pretend to be EITHER a cop OR a robber, expand that notion into an extremely long script without significantly altering the above dialogue, hire every bloody well-known actor on the planet, give it to Martin Scorcese, and BOOM! You'll have Departed (ohhhhhhh that one was bad).
I give this film a hefty 3.5/5 Ingenious Plot Twists (though in fact the movie possessed something more on the order of 15).
Film, the Third!
Children of Men
by
Alfonso Cuarón
Honestly, I am a bit speechless about this film. It is amazing. It is so good in fact that my typically childish and irreverent tone fails me, almost completely. The movie is brilliant, gripping, gorgeous, visceral, detailed, and best of all - post-apocalyptic sci-fi!
I am, and have been for some time now, a /huge/ lover of this genre. I will not lie, the origins of this crush are nestled somewhere in the dark recesses of my video-gaming past, in the creepy Mutant-filled depths of a certain FALLOUT 2. But really not even there. No, rather, in the mother fuckin' brilliant Louis Armstrong "Kiss to Build a Dream On" opening video with backdrop of horrific nuclear annihilation, the destruction of all earthly hope and order, and the savage reality of the deadly driven winds of atomic winter... the chills! the nerdy but awe-inspiring chills!
Woaahh Nellie. I think a went a little code-red on the geek scale for a minute there. Sorry about that.
If the genre, top-notch cinematography, acting, set design, suspense, and overall majesty of the whole film are not enough to get you to see this movie, then let it be known that two of the most intense, continuous, cut-free scenes I have ever seen in any film (even (marginally) surpassing the like 8-minute one-take fight scene in Hard Boiled with Chow Yun Fat that spans several floors of a building, via elevator, and contains lots of really flexible kicking), are here, in all their mind-blowing glory.
I can't describe... I just can't find the words... the words..... THEY SHOULD HAVE SENT A POET! Fuck it, I'll just draw the awesomeness of one of the scenes for you:
Children of Men: 5/5 Geniuses in Total, Eerily Almost-Telepathic, Agreement
Now stop reading and go see it, before the world really /does/ end and you miss your chance!
What's happened? Well, a lot, really. I suppose I shouldn't be too unhappy, since where else but in Ottawa can you see someone biking in -20 degree temperature, at about midnight, with an accordion strapped across his chest? I wonder where he could possibly have been going?
MOST PLAUSIBLE SCENARIO POSSIBLE:
Tall, mustachioed gentleman, wearing a crushed purple velvet suit, hair all pomade-slick: "ORDER! ORDER! ACCORDIONS AT REST! Welcome all to Ottawa's first official Underground Marxist-Leninist Winter Accordion-Biker Festival!"
"HERE HERE!!"
"We are gathered here today, in this large abandoned government warehouse - with wheelchair access for Stevie -"
"HI STEVIE!!"
"to HERALD THE DESTRUCTION OF CAPITALISM! PLAY ON COMRADES! PLAY ON!"
But in all seriousness, there's a lot of stuff. It has ocurred to me that it is simply no longer viable to ramble on and on interminably, you know, factoring in as I have done (with complex mathematical and statistical measuring devices) the precise duration of a typical person's attention span. So, for a change, I will attempt henceforth to keep my rambling short, sweet, but considerably more frequent.
Wonder how that'll work out.
To begin (and end) today's ramble, for it is my intention to linger on the subject of New York until I've exhausted my supply of delicious memories (no, honestly, the food! the FOOD! if you could only eat these thoughts!), today's topic will be:
DREW'S MOVIE REVIEWS!
Well, I considered using the ever-more cutesy "REVIEWIES", but then felt the last shred of my masculinity disappearing, and so I didn't.
In New York it was my ambition, since it is truly the CITY OF LIGHT
(being all flashy and blinky and stuff, and did I mention I am particularly awed by all things shiny and flickering in nature? especially when they loom above you like tall, glimmering tombstones)
to attend as many excellent films of no fewer than 5 stars in quality.
Internal Philo-Art Snob: "You know, Andrew, that whole 'star' rating thing is entirely arbitrary, and stems from a bloated economic infrastructure designed to pander to the basest common-denominator in consumer gullibility, and in no way accurately reflects the inherent, and fundamentally subjective worth of a film"
Drew the Intrepid Movie Reviewer: I WILL NOT BE CULLED BY YOUR LIES!
Film, the First! (Please note, since films are by their nature full of excitement, this blog entry shall contain an abnormally high! quantity of exclamation marks)
Pan's Labyrinth (El Laberinto del Fauno)
by
Guillermo del Toro
This film truly requires no introduction. Or review, for that matter. Go see it if you like Spanish people, civil wars, gobs of fertility symbolism, subdued Christian allegory, and imaginative creatures with hand-eyes.
I was going to rate this film something like "SHALO-", you know, as kind of like an almost-complete "shalom", because I swear to g-d that word is easily six times funnier when I say it. Unfortunately, it sounded like "SHALLOW", which is utterly inaccurate for this film, so instead I'm gonna give it:
4/5 Giant Leaping Tortoises with Flaming Wings that Double as Portals to a Secret Dimension Full of Cake
Film, the Second!
The Departed
by
Martin Scorcese
Premise: Take the very very first time you ever played Cops and Robbers, as you fired your clickety plastic orange gun and shouted hysterical taunts you believed were totally representive of the way both cops and robbers spoke, especially to each other, like:
"I'M GONNA GET YOU!"
"DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE!!!!"
"Bzoo! Bzoo! Bzoo!"
"Pow! Pow! Pow!"
"I GOT YOU! I GOT YOU!"
"NO YOU DIDN'T! I HIT YOU FIRST!"
and then hone in on the nagging thought, steadily dawning on you, that, Gosh, if you really wanted you could pretend to be EITHER a cop OR a robber, expand that notion into an extremely long script without significantly altering the above dialogue, hire every bloody well-known actor on the planet, give it to Martin Scorcese, and BOOM! You'll have Departed (ohhhhhhh that one was bad).
I give this film a hefty 3.5/5 Ingenious Plot Twists (though in fact the movie possessed something more on the order of 15).
Film, the Third!
Children of Men
by
Alfonso Cuarón
Honestly, I am a bit speechless about this film. It is amazing. It is so good in fact that my typically childish and irreverent tone fails me, almost completely. The movie is brilliant, gripping, gorgeous, visceral, detailed, and best of all - post-apocalyptic sci-fi!
I am, and have been for some time now, a /huge/ lover of this genre. I will not lie, the origins of this crush are nestled somewhere in the dark recesses of my video-gaming past, in the creepy Mutant-filled depths of a certain FALLOUT 2. But really not even there. No, rather, in the mother fuckin' brilliant Louis Armstrong "Kiss to Build a Dream On" opening video with backdrop of horrific nuclear annihilation, the destruction of all earthly hope and order, and the savage reality of the deadly driven winds of atomic winter... the chills! the nerdy but awe-inspiring chills!
Woaahh Nellie. I think a went a little code-red on the geek scale for a minute there. Sorry about that.
If the genre, top-notch cinematography, acting, set design, suspense, and overall majesty of the whole film are not enough to get you to see this movie, then let it be known that two of the most intense, continuous, cut-free scenes I have ever seen in any film (even (marginally) surpassing the like 8-minute one-take fight scene in Hard Boiled with Chow Yun Fat that spans several floors of a building, via elevator, and contains lots of really flexible kicking), are here, in all their mind-blowing glory.
I can't describe... I just can't find the words... the words..... THEY SHOULD HAVE SENT A POET! Fuck it, I'll just draw the awesomeness of one of the scenes for you:
Children of Men: 5/5 Geniuses in Total, Eerily Almost-Telepathic, Agreement
Now stop reading and go see it, before the world really /does/ end and you miss your chance!
Thursday, February 1, 2007
The Journey Home (and what the little Jew found there)
Holy shit. There is so much to report, and so little time to do it, so I've come to a sort of compromise with myself. I'm going to type REALLY REALLY quickly in an attempt to compress the totality of this past week into the smallest time space imaginable! In this way I will emerge victorious over fate, destiny, and fatalist destinies.
In other news, I am no longer in New York. I have arrived, safe and soundly, with snow crunching beneath my feet, in the Nation's Capital. Comic interlude:
AMERICAN BORDER SECURITY *DUM DUM DA DUM DUM DUUUUUMMMMM*
Malicious sergeant/small-penis-man/border patrol terrorist insurrection put-downing specialist/aka urban warfare against the mofucking evil of canadian tourists and their flap-eared hats, god damn freedom hating flap-ear wearing commie sludge-sucking pro-health-care pansy lily-sniffing wimps! (-hater): ALRIGHT YOU BITCHES, SHUT THE FUCK UP AND SIT DOWN! (As previously reported... though I never realized how true it is that some people literally talk in capitals, before that night)
VERSUS
Canadian Civilized Cross-Country Communication and Civility Courtesy Consortium (aka CANADIAN BORDER SECURITY *dum da dee twiddly da doo twiddly twiddly doo dop baaaaa*): Hi there! Did you pack your luggage? Oh that's wonderful. Are you carrying any firearms or other weapons that might pose a potentially hazardous threat to the health of your lovely neighbours? No? That's really great. Please carry on and have a splendid early morning!
This has not been an exaggeration.
So on a darker, more sombre, more contemplative, isolated, Jew-alone-in-the-world melancholic kind of reverie thing, as I gazed upon the rolling pre-dawn hills in upstate New York, crested with what was surely a little bit of incipient fog, just waiting to roll down into the slumbering cozy forest-nestled family cottages spotting the land, I decided then and there that the world was beautiful, and you know, anguish-ridden and sad and lonely, but fundamentally in some perservering way beautiful, and would always persist in being so, would always find ways of showing me these fleeting glimpses of beauty, no matter where I went, what I did, or how lonely I by myself became.
And then the hills went their little hilly way, and before I knew which side was Upstate (badum with a muffled ching), I was in Ottawa, and, well, you know how that old wives' tale ends.
And if today's blog appears even marginally more schizophrenic or hysterical and unrestrained than usual it is because of the explosive collusion of different emotions that are currently, probably, wreaking total irresponsible carnage on my spleen and hypothalamus. Not least of my worries is the quite realistically probable possibility that I will not in fact graduate this year, not at all, not even remotely, and be stuck lingering on in perpetual Ottawa-clinging Carleton-snuggling limbo without the stupid piece of processed tree flesh with ink particles that everyone worships and hugs and cherishes and calls by the strange and cryptic title "Deg-Ree." And if they had feet would we call them pedigrees, and feed them, and polish their coats?
But even more troubling is that nagging sentiment in the back of my gut that tells me, in not-so-subtle ways, that maybe what I in fact want is, in the end, NOT to go to grad school, but instead to fuck off, to wander blithely in some foreign country, getting myself into tremendously awkward but retrospectively hilarious situations, and above all to live and live wandering, alone and sometimes not. I'm an idealist, a romantic, a fool, a putz, a yokel, and worst of all a shmuck with a penchant for the melodramatic. But am I a scholar?
So much has happened, and so much continues to happen. There is literally too much to say. I've learned that the eye of a writer, the nack, or the foolhardiness (call it what you will) that enables one to overcome the horrible places of silence, is seeing in the minutae of existence these little fascinating details, and I think part of it is also the ability to shake them loose, shed some light on their brief, fractured, shifting facets, and make of the mundane something new... something transfigured and... and... well... I've used that other word too much today, so best perhaps to shelve it lest it become old and worn like so much tired cloth.
Which is really another long-winded way of saying I'm way too goddamn wired, sleep-deprived (thank jesus for making me immune to the curse of sleep in interminable bus trips, for lord I know not what I would do, being all warm and well-rested like that), and way way too confused to make any kind of coherent statement about anything except my own almost utter incoherence.
But rest assured, there is much still to report from the goings-on that most assuredly went..on.. in New York... not least of which shall include: EXCITING AND SPECIAL MOVIE REVIEWS! Stay tuned!
In other news, I am no longer in New York. I have arrived, safe and soundly, with snow crunching beneath my feet, in the Nation's Capital. Comic interlude:
AMERICAN BORDER SECURITY *DUM DUM DA DUM DUM DUUUUUMMMMM*
Malicious sergeant/small-penis-man/border patrol terrorist insurrection put-downing specialist/aka urban warfare against the mofucking evil of canadian tourists and their flap-eared hats, god damn freedom hating flap-ear wearing commie sludge-sucking pro-health-care pansy lily-sniffing wimps! (-hater): ALRIGHT YOU BITCHES, SHUT THE FUCK UP AND SIT DOWN! (As previously reported... though I never realized how true it is that some people literally talk in capitals, before that night)
VERSUS
Canadian Civilized Cross-Country Communication and Civility Courtesy Consortium (aka CANADIAN BORDER SECURITY *dum da dee twiddly da doo twiddly twiddly doo dop baaaaa*): Hi there! Did you pack your luggage? Oh that's wonderful. Are you carrying any firearms or other weapons that might pose a potentially hazardous threat to the health of your lovely neighbours? No? That's really great. Please carry on and have a splendid early morning!
This has not been an exaggeration.
So on a darker, more sombre, more contemplative, isolated, Jew-alone-in-the-world melancholic kind of reverie thing, as I gazed upon the rolling pre-dawn hills in upstate New York, crested with what was surely a little bit of incipient fog, just waiting to roll down into the slumbering cozy forest-nestled family cottages spotting the land, I decided then and there that the world was beautiful, and you know, anguish-ridden and sad and lonely, but fundamentally in some perservering way beautiful, and would always persist in being so, would always find ways of showing me these fleeting glimpses of beauty, no matter where I went, what I did, or how lonely I by myself became.
And then the hills went their little hilly way, and before I knew which side was Upstate (badum with a muffled ching), I was in Ottawa, and, well, you know how that old wives' tale ends.
And if today's blog appears even marginally more schizophrenic or hysterical and unrestrained than usual it is because of the explosive collusion of different emotions that are currently, probably, wreaking total irresponsible carnage on my spleen and hypothalamus. Not least of my worries is the quite realistically probable possibility that I will not in fact graduate this year, not at all, not even remotely, and be stuck lingering on in perpetual Ottawa-clinging Carleton-snuggling limbo without the stupid piece of processed tree flesh with ink particles that everyone worships and hugs and cherishes and calls by the strange and cryptic title "Deg-Ree." And if they had feet would we call them pedigrees, and feed them, and polish their coats?
But even more troubling is that nagging sentiment in the back of my gut that tells me, in not-so-subtle ways, that maybe what I in fact want is, in the end, NOT to go to grad school, but instead to fuck off, to wander blithely in some foreign country, getting myself into tremendously awkward but retrospectively hilarious situations, and above all to live and live wandering, alone and sometimes not. I'm an idealist, a romantic, a fool, a putz, a yokel, and worst of all a shmuck with a penchant for the melodramatic. But am I a scholar?
So much has happened, and so much continues to happen. There is literally too much to say. I've learned that the eye of a writer, the nack, or the foolhardiness (call it what you will) that enables one to overcome the horrible places of silence, is seeing in the minutae of existence these little fascinating details, and I think part of it is also the ability to shake them loose, shed some light on their brief, fractured, shifting facets, and make of the mundane something new... something transfigured and... and... well... I've used that other word too much today, so best perhaps to shelve it lest it become old and worn like so much tired cloth.
Which is really another long-winded way of saying I'm way too goddamn wired, sleep-deprived (thank jesus for making me immune to the curse of sleep in interminable bus trips, for lord I know not what I would do, being all warm and well-rested like that), and way way too confused to make any kind of coherent statement about anything except my own almost utter incoherence.
But rest assured, there is much still to report from the goings-on that most assuredly went..on.. in New York... not least of which shall include: EXCITING AND SPECIAL MOVIE REVIEWS! Stay tuned!
Sunday, January 28, 2007
The Great Conch of Civilization
Since I've been so sparse with posts lately, I've decided to condense the more interesting aspects of my time in New York into powerful thematic segments.
This segment shall be entitled: ANDREW'S ARTSY ARTNESS!
Well, shortly after the events recorded in my previous blog entry, Madeline, Trish and I decided to visit the Guggenheim.
Madeline and Trish: "We're going to the Guggenheim!"
Andrew: "Okay!"
We agreed to meet there at 6:00pm. They left early and I took my time getting ready. This included eating, showering, plotting out a subway route to the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), dressing, double checking the address of the MOMA, cleaning some dishes, pocketing the MOMA information securely, and heading out. I made all my connections brilliantly and arrived at 11 West 53st, the location of the MOMA, with about 15 minutes to spare! I bought myself the juiciest fallafel I have ever eaten - from a street vendor no less! - and waited outside the entrance for the arrival of Trish and Madeline, delicious fallafel juice dripping slowly down my chin...
And...
Did you know you can cab from the MOMA to the Guggenheim in about 15 minutes! It even cuts through central park! Very scenic and fun!
The Guggenheim, for the uninitiated (though you be few), is a large spirally conch-like building with lots of paintings stored inside it. Outsiders, or Non-Guggenheimers as they are called in technical ARTSY language, are permitted for a nominal fee to stare at these paintings, smell them, and pretend to understand their profound significance.
Once you have crossed the invisible and eldritch threshold of "The Guggenheiming", denoted by the Sacred Doors of Revolving, you become temporarily endowed with magical Guggenheim abilities. These abilities enable you to grow steadily tired and cranky and bored over the span of only two hours, culminating in almost total banality.
Using awesome pneumonic techniques of mental cognition, I created a secret chamber in my mind wherein I stored three of the most exquisite paintings from the Guggenheim collection. These paintings, perfectly preserved in my memory, shall now be projected by the miracle of ARTSY technology onto your computer screen.
Painting, the First:
Two Seated Children (Claude and Paloma)
by
Pablo Picasso
Now, before I begin critiquing this painting, let me just say that if I were to write a manifesto for Art Criticism, it would read something like this:
STOP! The unfertile nebulous meandering commentary of bygone years must now cease, under the spectacular moon of new nightly nocturnality! STOP! Pilgrims of the mind! And sow your seeds in fecund loam! The Tyranny of Grist and Grind here-now ENDS!
Of course, if I were ever to write a manifesto for Art Criticism it would probably never get read. Either that, or people would read it with that look of pained forebearance that I so often get.
So, instead, I'll just state my ARTSY prejudices: Art is fun and loose and bendy and stuff. Art Criticism, since it's about art, should be those things too.
Now to begin: ANDREW'S ARTSY ARTNESS!
So basically this Picasso painting really caught my eye. It was sandwiched between a bunch of other austere Spanish paintings of children, both the seated and non-seated varieties, doing such exciting and insightful things as: 1. Staring Directly Ahead; or, 2. Trying to Look Like Adults. Oh yeah, the painters were like El Greco, that other dude who painted royalty, what was his name... and like Velasquez, and probably someone called Sanchez, and Dali too, but you might want to double check the Sanchez.
But this painting.. oh wait, it kind of scrolled off didn't it? Hold on, let me put it up again...
There we go, perfect. See now, THIS painting was like a cross between Tim Burton and Edward Gorey, though of course Picasso preceded both of them, so it's not an apt comparison at all, really. But I think we can tease out their influences here, a sort of seminal piece for future macabre art - a visual manifesto for depicting pale-skinned children backgrounded by a stark, sombre, and yes - pallid - moon. Pallidity being an essential quality in all things macabre.
And anyway it's ghostly and twisted and imaginative and frankly I didn't get that impression from any of the other paintings, mired as they were in the 16th and 17th centuries, poor things. Of course I guess I could talk about the obvious maternal sublimation in the seated posture of the male child in relation to the domineering female presence of his (presumed) sister, whose two-facedness belies a disunity projected in opposition to the comparitive unity and wholeness of the male. I mean, I COULD do that, but it'd be a bloody lot of wank, wouldn't it?
Painting, The Second:
Dead Birds
by
Pablo Picasso
Yes, this painting was also by Picasso (who, though there were paintings by Goya and Dali and other good artists, was by far the most interesting and innovative and, frankly, modern - Dali, my old love, now strikes me as a bit too transparently egoistic). It was nice, cubist, and.. well, I think it would really look good on my wall next to the giant oriental fan.
Painting, the Third:
The Table (Still Life with Rabbit)
by
Joan Miró
This painting appeared in a section dedicated, amazingly, to food. Apparently, Spanish people eat a lot of dead animals. The reason this painting is included here is because of the tripartite symbolic content of the three animals it figures: the fowl is the father, who observes all of the vast, resplendent -- wait for it -- tableau of creation, with his one watchful, unblinking eye. The fish is the holy spirit, because it points always towards the heavens and suffuses everything with a vague, unidentifiable odour. And, finally, the rabbit is the Son, because he kind of looks angry and I think if Christ were around right now he'd be pretty pissed off too.
And that basically concludes the more or less first installation of ANDREW'S ARTSY ARTNESS! Since I also went to the MOMA, and because this post is getting pretty long, my next post will be about that. Tata for now! (This is the official trendy ARTSY farewell.)
This segment shall be entitled: ANDREW'S ARTSY ARTNESS!
Well, shortly after the events recorded in my previous blog entry, Madeline, Trish and I decided to visit the Guggenheim.
Madeline and Trish: "We're going to the Guggenheim!"
Andrew: "Okay!"
We agreed to meet there at 6:00pm. They left early and I took my time getting ready. This included eating, showering, plotting out a subway route to the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), dressing, double checking the address of the MOMA, cleaning some dishes, pocketing the MOMA information securely, and heading out. I made all my connections brilliantly and arrived at 11 West 53st, the location of the MOMA, with about 15 minutes to spare! I bought myself the juiciest fallafel I have ever eaten - from a street vendor no less! - and waited outside the entrance for the arrival of Trish and Madeline, delicious fallafel juice dripping slowly down my chin...
And...
Did you know you can cab from the MOMA to the Guggenheim in about 15 minutes! It even cuts through central park! Very scenic and fun!
The Guggenheim, for the uninitiated (though you be few), is a large spirally conch-like building with lots of paintings stored inside it. Outsiders, or Non-Guggenheimers as they are called in technical ARTSY language, are permitted for a nominal fee to stare at these paintings, smell them, and pretend to understand their profound significance.
Once you have crossed the invisible and eldritch threshold of "The Guggenheiming", denoted by the Sacred Doors of Revolving, you become temporarily endowed with magical Guggenheim abilities. These abilities enable you to grow steadily tired and cranky and bored over the span of only two hours, culminating in almost total banality.
Using awesome pneumonic techniques of mental cognition, I created a secret chamber in my mind wherein I stored three of the most exquisite paintings from the Guggenheim collection. These paintings, perfectly preserved in my memory, shall now be projected by the miracle of ARTSY technology onto your computer screen.
Painting, the First:
Two Seated Children (Claude and Paloma)
by
Pablo Picasso
Now, before I begin critiquing this painting, let me just say that if I were to write a manifesto for Art Criticism, it would read something like this:
STOP! The unfertile nebulous meandering commentary of bygone years must now cease, under the spectacular moon of new nightly nocturnality! STOP! Pilgrims of the mind! And sow your seeds in fecund loam! The Tyranny of Grist and Grind here-now ENDS!
Of course, if I were ever to write a manifesto for Art Criticism it would probably never get read. Either that, or people would read it with that look of pained forebearance that I so often get.
So, instead, I'll just state my ARTSY prejudices: Art is fun and loose and bendy and stuff. Art Criticism, since it's about art, should be those things too.
Now to begin: ANDREW'S ARTSY ARTNESS!
So basically this Picasso painting really caught my eye. It was sandwiched between a bunch of other austere Spanish paintings of children, both the seated and non-seated varieties, doing such exciting and insightful things as: 1. Staring Directly Ahead; or, 2. Trying to Look Like Adults. Oh yeah, the painters were like El Greco, that other dude who painted royalty, what was his name... and like Velasquez, and probably someone called Sanchez, and Dali too, but you might want to double check the Sanchez.
But this painting.. oh wait, it kind of scrolled off didn't it? Hold on, let me put it up again...
There we go, perfect. See now, THIS painting was like a cross between Tim Burton and Edward Gorey, though of course Picasso preceded both of them, so it's not an apt comparison at all, really. But I think we can tease out their influences here, a sort of seminal piece for future macabre art - a visual manifesto for depicting pale-skinned children backgrounded by a stark, sombre, and yes - pallid - moon. Pallidity being an essential quality in all things macabre.
And anyway it's ghostly and twisted and imaginative and frankly I didn't get that impression from any of the other paintings, mired as they were in the 16th and 17th centuries, poor things. Of course I guess I could talk about the obvious maternal sublimation in the seated posture of the male child in relation to the domineering female presence of his (presumed) sister, whose two-facedness belies a disunity projected in opposition to the comparitive unity and wholeness of the male. I mean, I COULD do that, but it'd be a bloody lot of wank, wouldn't it?
Painting, The Second:
Dead Birds
by
Pablo Picasso
Yes, this painting was also by Picasso (who, though there were paintings by Goya and Dali and other good artists, was by far the most interesting and innovative and, frankly, modern - Dali, my old love, now strikes me as a bit too transparently egoistic). It was nice, cubist, and.. well, I think it would really look good on my wall next to the giant oriental fan.
Painting, the Third:
The Table (Still Life with Rabbit)
by
Joan Miró
This painting appeared in a section dedicated, amazingly, to food. Apparently, Spanish people eat a lot of dead animals. The reason this painting is included here is because of the tripartite symbolic content of the three animals it figures: the fowl is the father, who observes all of the vast, resplendent -- wait for it -- tableau of creation, with his one watchful, unblinking eye. The fish is the holy spirit, because it points always towards the heavens and suffuses everything with a vague, unidentifiable odour. And, finally, the rabbit is the Son, because he kind of looks angry and I think if Christ were around right now he'd be pretty pissed off too.
And that basically concludes the more or less first installation of ANDREW'S ARTSY ARTNESS! Since I also went to the MOMA, and because this post is getting pretty long, my next post will be about that. Tata for now! (This is the official trendy ARTSY farewell.)
Sunday, January 21, 2007
Let there be... BLOOD!
Well, it's been an inexcusably long time since my last post, and for that I apologize. Mostly to myself, really, for sort of falling off the writing wagon, albeit briefly.
I've had a lot on my mind these past few days. Indeed.
Since quite a lot has happened, I think a brief recap is in order, rather than a lengthy and detailed retrospective. A sum, if you will, of the choicest bits.
I think the day after the Gay Philosophy thing I worked up the courage (or rather, whittled down my apathy) and called up this girl Tania, who was supposedly Miles' friend, and who was holding on to his suit for him. Which he had forgotten... at her apartment. And which he was so insistent that I retrieve for him, because that's what friends do for friends... you know, collect their discarded and forgotten clothing from gigantic cities around the world.
Being the kind of silly and wonderfully brilliant people that we are, Madeline and I decided to make the whole thing a PHOTO ADVENTURE. But before you get your knickers in a bunch with excitement, the photos will have to wait to be uploaded, since they're on Madeline's camera and Madeline seems to have some kind of phobia about hooking it up to my laptop. As if my laptop had cooties, or something.
DESTINATION: ASTORIA
From the above title, you should be able to deduce that our destination was Astoria. Astoria, for those who are not intimately familiar with it, is sort of like a suburb of New York. Unlike most suburbs in... say... OTTAWA... Astoria sounds like a cool and distant fantasy land full of dragons. It is in FACT a cool, distant, fantasy land full of marvelous Indian restaurants. It's also in Queens.
Well, to cut a long story short, it was really really far. When we finally got to the place, we were greeted by Rahul. Rahul is Tania's husband, has a fancy British accent, and does post-conflict work. I have no idea what post-conflict work entails, but apparently it is very dangerous and exciting and probably involves digging wells while bullets fly overhead. Rahul was very nice, and to his infinite credit was a food and restaurant connoisseur.
He also had never met Miles. Tania, his wife, arrived shortly after we did, and she too had never met him. And apparently, Tania's sister, who I originally thought was Miles' friend, only knew him peripherally through her friend. This fourth person, whose name I never got, was also apparently only the most fleeting of acquaintances with Miles. What a web of confused relations!
So, the story I pieced together from all this was that Miles, apparently wearing a suit, met some people, drove to New York, crashed at some person's house, forgot his suit, and wandered off into the streets of New York naked, probably with a bottle of Vermouth in a plastic bag.
Anyhow, we got the suit, vowed to wear the oversized thing in various comic poses and photograph ourselves doing it (since Miles is like 6'5", it really is comical), and then wandered back home. We also spotted a disgusting lump of bulbous rooty material that MAY be ginger but is more likely an alien pod waiting to birth little parasitic mind-controlling spores in order to take over and then terraform the world into a scorched carbonaceous wasteland. We have photographic evidence to prove this.
Well, that's pretty much it for that day. A day or two after the Gay Philosophy thing, I met up with Dan for some food at a Korean restaurant that Rahul had recommended. The place was called Cho Ding Sol, or something like that, 55 W 35th St., and wasn't bad but wasn't fantastic.
(For anyone wondering, Dan is not a romantic interest of mine. I met him on an online Go Server, and consider him only a friend.)
After dinner we went down to the East Village, in Manhattan, to check out a gay bar called the Phoenix. I believe I mentioned it in a previous post. No one was there yet, so we wandered around the area, which is really very nice and trendy with many cool cafes and tea houses. We found this one place that was like my quintessential nerd-hippie dream bookstore/cafe type establishment. Only, upon closer inspection, the books were really primarily gay porn, which in retrospect is not altogether a bad modification of my dream.
Dan and I perused, but did not purchase, gay porn. I swear. We bought a drink, chatted, then went back to the Phoenix to grab another drink, shoot some pool (I had originally written "people" by accident! yikes), and then call it a night. Pretty unexciting, really.
Well, a day or two after that, Trish, another friend from the Humanities, came into town on her way to Greece. She is there now, working on an organic farm somewhere. Crazy girl. Lots of fun, though!
The three of us - me, Madeline, and Trish - went out to the local bar in the area called "The Gate", which is Madeline's top pick because of its proximity to the apartment, and more importantly because an attractive sweater-wearing fuzzy British bartender called Noel works there, for whom Madeline has a bit of a crush. I drank with the two of them until about 2:00 AM, got too drunk, and came home. Madeline gave me her building key so I could get in, which naturally meant that I had to stay up and wait for them.
I lay in bed until 6:00 AM, feeling nauseated, thinking they'd been kidnapped or worse, until finally the two wenches staggered in, laughing hysterically, and collapsed into a heap of splayed, writhing, drunken limbs. Maybe I'm exaggerating, but probably not.
Their night was an hysterical, licentious romp of drunken abandon. By the end, they were pouring their own drinks. As an indication... Madeline came home with a spigot from one of the taps! Don't ask me why.
Well, the afternoon rolled around, then dusk, then evening, and still the two ladies were asleep. There was a neat Japanese bookstore I wanted to check out, so by 5:00pm I'd resolved to step out the door. (I was a little bit hung over myself. Just a bit.) Trish woke up and I persuaded her to come see a musical with me.
Trish: "Should we invite Madeline?"
Andrew: "I don't know... is she up?"
Trish: "Why don't you check?"
Andrew: "I would, you know. But... she... scares me when she's hungover."
In the end, just Trish and I went to see:
THE EVIL DEAD MUSICAL!
Oh yeah. We bought the cheapest tickets we could ($29), and when we got into the theatre and found our seats, we noticed there were plastic bags over the first three rows.
"Uhh... this doesn't look good."
Apparently, The Evil Dead Musical features a "Splatter Section", where theatre-goers are inundated with much splurting and gushing blood! Thankfully, they handed out little plastic raincoats during the intermission. Glad I wore mine, because in the big final act I got a huge stream of blood right into my lap!
Funny moments:
Andrew: "So what really IS the difference between a musical and an opera?"
Trish: *looks at Andrew like he must be joking*
Andrew: "No, come on, I mean really. They both have music!"
Trish: *starts laughing hysterically*
Andrew: "What?!"
Trish: *dull, drawling, faux-congratulatory tone* "You got a DEGREEEEEEE!"
Leaving the theatre, after the performance...
Guy in big white hoody, DRENCHED in blood: "I swear, they were AIMING for me!"
Friends: *laughter*
Guy in big white hoody, DRENCHED in blood: "God damnit."
The musical itself was alright. But damn, there was BLOOD!!!
And with that... I bring you all only partially up to date. Madeline and I are heading out now to check out the MOMA. I'll post again later! Cheers.
I've had a lot on my mind these past few days. Indeed.
Since quite a lot has happened, I think a brief recap is in order, rather than a lengthy and detailed retrospective. A sum, if you will, of the choicest bits.
I think the day after the Gay Philosophy thing I worked up the courage (or rather, whittled down my apathy) and called up this girl Tania, who was supposedly Miles' friend, and who was holding on to his suit for him. Which he had forgotten... at her apartment. And which he was so insistent that I retrieve for him, because that's what friends do for friends... you know, collect their discarded and forgotten clothing from gigantic cities around the world.
Being the kind of silly and wonderfully brilliant people that we are, Madeline and I decided to make the whole thing a PHOTO ADVENTURE. But before you get your knickers in a bunch with excitement, the photos will have to wait to be uploaded, since they're on Madeline's camera and Madeline seems to have some kind of phobia about hooking it up to my laptop. As if my laptop had cooties, or something.
DESTINATION: ASTORIA
From the above title, you should be able to deduce that our destination was Astoria. Astoria, for those who are not intimately familiar with it, is sort of like a suburb of New York. Unlike most suburbs in... say... OTTAWA... Astoria sounds like a cool and distant fantasy land full of dragons. It is in FACT a cool, distant, fantasy land full of marvelous Indian restaurants. It's also in Queens.
Well, to cut a long story short, it was really really far. When we finally got to the place, we were greeted by Rahul. Rahul is Tania's husband, has a fancy British accent, and does post-conflict work. I have no idea what post-conflict work entails, but apparently it is very dangerous and exciting and probably involves digging wells while bullets fly overhead. Rahul was very nice, and to his infinite credit was a food and restaurant connoisseur.
He also had never met Miles. Tania, his wife, arrived shortly after we did, and she too had never met him. And apparently, Tania's sister, who I originally thought was Miles' friend, only knew him peripherally through her friend. This fourth person, whose name I never got, was also apparently only the most fleeting of acquaintances with Miles. What a web of confused relations!
So, the story I pieced together from all this was that Miles, apparently wearing a suit, met some people, drove to New York, crashed at some person's house, forgot his suit, and wandered off into the streets of New York naked, probably with a bottle of Vermouth in a plastic bag.
Anyhow, we got the suit, vowed to wear the oversized thing in various comic poses and photograph ourselves doing it (since Miles is like 6'5", it really is comical), and then wandered back home. We also spotted a disgusting lump of bulbous rooty material that MAY be ginger but is more likely an alien pod waiting to birth little parasitic mind-controlling spores in order to take over and then terraform the world into a scorched carbonaceous wasteland. We have photographic evidence to prove this.
Well, that's pretty much it for that day. A day or two after the Gay Philosophy thing, I met up with Dan for some food at a Korean restaurant that Rahul had recommended. The place was called Cho Ding Sol, or something like that, 55 W 35th St., and wasn't bad but wasn't fantastic.
(For anyone wondering, Dan is not a romantic interest of mine. I met him on an online Go Server, and consider him only a friend.)
After dinner we went down to the East Village, in Manhattan, to check out a gay bar called the Phoenix. I believe I mentioned it in a previous post. No one was there yet, so we wandered around the area, which is really very nice and trendy with many cool cafes and tea houses. We found this one place that was like my quintessential nerd-hippie dream bookstore/cafe type establishment. Only, upon closer inspection, the books were really primarily gay porn, which in retrospect is not altogether a bad modification of my dream.
Dan and I perused, but did not purchase, gay porn. I swear. We bought a drink, chatted, then went back to the Phoenix to grab another drink, shoot some pool (I had originally written "people" by accident! yikes), and then call it a night. Pretty unexciting, really.
Well, a day or two after that, Trish, another friend from the Humanities, came into town on her way to Greece. She is there now, working on an organic farm somewhere. Crazy girl. Lots of fun, though!
The three of us - me, Madeline, and Trish - went out to the local bar in the area called "The Gate", which is Madeline's top pick because of its proximity to the apartment, and more importantly because an attractive sweater-wearing fuzzy British bartender called Noel works there, for whom Madeline has a bit of a crush. I drank with the two of them until about 2:00 AM, got too drunk, and came home. Madeline gave me her building key so I could get in, which naturally meant that I had to stay up and wait for them.
I lay in bed until 6:00 AM, feeling nauseated, thinking they'd been kidnapped or worse, until finally the two wenches staggered in, laughing hysterically, and collapsed into a heap of splayed, writhing, drunken limbs. Maybe I'm exaggerating, but probably not.
Their night was an hysterical, licentious romp of drunken abandon. By the end, they were pouring their own drinks. As an indication... Madeline came home with a spigot from one of the taps! Don't ask me why.
Well, the afternoon rolled around, then dusk, then evening, and still the two ladies were asleep. There was a neat Japanese bookstore I wanted to check out, so by 5:00pm I'd resolved to step out the door. (I was a little bit hung over myself. Just a bit.) Trish woke up and I persuaded her to come see a musical with me.
Trish: "Should we invite Madeline?"
Andrew: "I don't know... is she up?"
Trish: "Why don't you check?"
Andrew: "I would, you know. But... she... scares me when she's hungover."
In the end, just Trish and I went to see:
THE EVIL DEAD MUSICAL!
Oh yeah. We bought the cheapest tickets we could ($29), and when we got into the theatre and found our seats, we noticed there were plastic bags over the first three rows.
"Uhh... this doesn't look good."
Apparently, The Evil Dead Musical features a "Splatter Section", where theatre-goers are inundated with much splurting and gushing blood! Thankfully, they handed out little plastic raincoats during the intermission. Glad I wore mine, because in the big final act I got a huge stream of blood right into my lap!
Funny moments:
Andrew: "So what really IS the difference between a musical and an opera?"
Trish: *looks at Andrew like he must be joking*
Andrew: "No, come on, I mean really. They both have music!"
Trish: *starts laughing hysterically*
Andrew: "What?!"
Trish: *dull, drawling, faux-congratulatory tone* "You got a DEGREEEEEEE!"
Leaving the theatre, after the performance...
Guy in big white hoody, DRENCHED in blood: "I swear, they were AIMING for me!"
Friends: *laughter*
Guy in big white hoody, DRENCHED in blood: "God damnit."
The musical itself was alright. But damn, there was BLOOD!!!
And with that... I bring you all only partially up to date. Madeline and I are heading out now to check out the MOMA. I'll post again later! Cheers.
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