Culture Sandwich

Photo taken in Banksy Tunnel, London

Note to Readers

I will have little or no internet access between now and January 2nd. See you in the new year.

 

Marilyn Monroe Response

This image was sent to me by one of my lovely readers in response to my Marilyn post. What a find.

 

Going to Marilyn in my Mind

Julie gave me a photograph of her for my birthday. Marilyn's watching me right now as I work. What is she thinking? Who was this creature of men's minds?

 

Question of the Week

The New Video Games: "Extreme Pornography" or "Genuine Art Form?":

Coming Soon: The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus

 

Between the death of Heath Ledger during filming and director Terry Gilliam’s troubled production past, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (which releases in the U.S. on December 25) is positively haunted.

Gilliam’s cinematic woes are most poignantly captured in the documentary Lost in La Mancha, which follows his doomed quest to make The Man Who Killed Don Quixote in 1999.  The only American-born member of the British Monty Python crew, Gilliam’s filmic worlds spin on an axis of phantasmagoria and real world critique; or, as he put it in an essay on his Oscar-nominated work, Brazil (1985), the “craziness of our awkwardly ordered society.”

This time, Gilliam has turned his kaleidoscopic vision on Parnassus, the head of a theater troupe who makes a Faustian deal with the devil. After Ledger’s death, Johnny Depp, Jude Law, and Colin Farrell took on the triple task of playing three different sides of his character Tony (donating the proceeds to his daughter).  The film will certainly incite emotion in Ledger fans, as he dangles from a noose in his first appearance.

Gilliam’s Imaginarium has elicited such radically different reactions that it’s worth taking a gander, if only to see if it’s “another part of Neverland” as rocker Patti Smith swears, or so “erroneously awful” that it could lead the Guardian Film Blog to conclude that “Imagination can be a terrible thing.”

The Death of Beautiful Stranger

 

This boy he died
as his love stood by,
frozen, as the snow fell
from the sky, like bullets
in slow motion.

He unraveled in darkness
while whispering “help me, 
beautiful stranger” to his love
who stood, silent, 
in falling snow.

There was a space
in him made for the passing
of sun, but he covered it
as she looked on, quiet,
a pole in the hole
of the light.

His skin stopped breathing,
as she watched, snow wings 
gently heaving, she sobbed
and stitched closed
the night.

This boy he died
as his love stood by in red snow,
hoping. Inside she was hoping,
but her love, he was floating
he was floating
away.

Worst Movie Ever!

It’s a darn shame that the first film from Our Stories Films, a joint venture of Robert L. Johnson (creator of Black Entertainment Television) and Bob and Harvey Weinstein (creators of just about everything else) is a Caddyshack rip-off that substitutes humor for racism.  

Our Stories Films' ostensible goal is to create “comedic, family-friendly feature films for African American and urban audiences.” Unfortunately, Who’s Your Caddy (2007) is neither comedic nor family-friendly, and (hopefully) will please neither African American nor urban audiences—unless they are shelling out over ten dollars just to see Andy Milonakis with a mouth full of bling. 

Antwan Andre “Big Boi” Patton (half of the acclaimed OutKast hip-hop duo who earned his acting chops in Idlewild and ATL, and should therefore know better) is Christopher “C-Note” Hawkins. C-Note is a rap star who trumps one gaffe with another, motoring through the movie in a pimped-out Hummer golf cart, rocking a plethora of plaid outfits. 

C-Note’s father was a caddy who got dissed by President Cummings, the head of the snooty Carolina Pines Country Club. Cummings (played by a Jeffrey Jones who is no stranger to the role of the kill-joy, just ask Ferris Bueller) enlists everyone, from a foxy lawyer to a little person hit man, to ensure that C-Note goes down. 

The film is powered forward by racial slurs and the commanding flatulence of Big Large (Faizon Love) and his symphonic bottom. With its mind-numbing mother lode of stereotypes, Who's Your Caddy is like a swift golf ball to the cultural cojones.  If this is really how black and white people are, I'm moving to Mars.

Richard Foreman's Idiot Savant

 
   
On Wednesday night I went to see the avant-garde playwright Richard Foreman's newest foray into the absurd, “Idiot Savant,” at the Public Theater. Since 1994, I’ve made an annual pilgrimage to partake of Foreman's strange offerings.

The madness began with “My Head Was a Sledgehammer” (1994). My high-strung mother and I left feeling invigorated, while my mild-mannered psychoanalyst father had a mini anxiety attack on the way out. That he comes back with us every year is an indication of the kind of loyalty Foreman can inspire.

Plot summary would be futile, but "Idiot Savant" could best be described as an ode to confusion. Set in what looks like a genteel drawing room that has exploded, Foreman’s colorful display of voices and visions conveys a breakdown of ontological authority.

At intervals, Foreman's god-like voice warns his actors and audience against seeking answers to their endless questions lest they be “tricked again.” He reinforces his admonitions by introducing his deus ex machina--a giant, duck-like contraption that comes, not to resolve the plot, but to play golf.

In carefully choreographed chaos, the characters knock into pieces of the aforementioned drawing room on crack, examining their own states of being in toneless voices. The wild card this time, however, is Willem Dafoe as the eponymous Savant. Dafoe brings verve to the characteristic Foreman concoction that is one part philosophy, one part lobotomy, and one part psychosis.

Why, you might ask, did my father return to this den of illogicality? You can’t really blame him. Foreman’s plays--as befits the creations of the founder of the Ontological-Hysteric Theater--are like telegrams from a malfunctioning mind whose obsessions ineluctably become our own.

Mole Love

We are not butterflies, but moles,
secrets of the earth. Whispering in the dirt,
we are sightless, but I see you with my hands.
Slopes and slips of skin, and I find you,
could detect you from any place in time
by the tickle of your hair, the strike of your glow,
the rhythm of your ever-changing shoulders. 

Just know that we are not the beginning
or the end of the story; we are tendons
that carry the tale on our backs.
If I had no destination but you,
I would sit quietly, mole hat in hand, and glow
because I have learned
that you are the kingdom,
and the rest is just colored pieces of sand.

Question of the Week

Is Celia Walden correct in suggesting that female jealousy is a form of lust?

Keira Knightley. Photo: AFP Photo 

The Search for Perfection

Nobody can define perfection, but everyone seems to think it lives next to the one thing that can make them happy and whole. Chasing the absolute is as noble and exasperating as our pursuit of all ciphers that strike us as stairs to somewhere better.

Our conception of the exquisite is as mysterious as we are. I may claim that I don’t believe in the existence of the flighty ideal; but the last line of Joyce’s “The Dead”--“His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead”—still sends the kind of shivers that can only come from the sublime down my spine.

Yet we could also say that the best parts of things are in the flaws; in the gracefully defective works of art we sheepishly admire; the face that is so wrong that it’s strangely right, a glory of imperfection.

The pilgrimage to something greater is a spectral form of nostalgia. There is in it a longing to have again a splendid something that never was. No matter how far we wander, we’re always convinced we can see our dreams peeking out of the horizon. It strikes me that perfection is to pause for a moment and realize that we’re wildly, deliriously, over-the-moon happy right where we are. 

At Last

 

Here,
where not even the light
can find me,
I am at one with the mist.

I notice the spinning life of insects,
the smallness of the impossibly deep,
the leaves falling upwards.

 

Eloise and the Plaza

We had a drink at the Plaza the other night. We drank pink champagne and sat on red cushions. I couldn't stop thinking about Eloise, my long lost fictional love, scampering around this rosy urban labyrinth.

The Cult of Beauty at What Cost?

 

I had a very strong reaction to a picture of Patti Smith the other day. As I gazed at the fur under her raised arms, I felt guilty and envious.  That peek of hair made me think that when it came to being at home in one’s own skin, I was all talk and she was all action. The feeling was akin to meeting a vegetarian and being forced to reflect on my own carnivorous hypocrisy—lamenting the cruelty of the meat industry and recommending grave documentaries on bestial torture to friends, only to throw back some BBQ during my lunch hour. Staring at the picture, I felt that Patti was the real thing and I was just the synthetic version; as though all the depilatory agents I put between me and my own naturalness had seeped into my pores, making me more chemicals than ideals. 

Every day, I’m whacked over the head by the peculiar merger of economics and aesthetics that is the beauty industry, but why don’t I whack it back even harder? When I go to buy shampoo, I’m bombarded by all the things that are “wrong” with me. As I trawl the aisles of my local drug store, I’m haunted by the mantra of capitalist sexual desire – if I want to be a dish, I must buy; I must transform. I’m assaulted with serums to “tame” my curls, torture products to burn or rip off my body hair, shelves of deodorants to police the malodorous, to spritz and swab away all olfactory souvenirs of the real me. 

The messages are everywhere in these insecurity museums: my grays need dying, my eyes need lining, my lips need sticking, and my lashes need to be blackened with a magical mystery goop. My fat needs to be siphoned, burned, starved off, dieted away, thrown up, exercised into absentia, or downright scared out with diet pills that could make me turn all Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas on you. 

I almost always leave the store feeling like there’s nothing natural about my body that isn’t monstrous and in need of “fixing.” It’s as though my drug store is trying to tell me that I don’t even deserve to be a woman if I’m not the poster girl for culturally-sanctioned sexy; which seems to involve being odorless, and by the end of my shopping spree, soulless and penniless. Yet, a lighter change purse isn’t the main issue here. 

My real purchasing problems are the shoddy ideals I’ve subtly bought into. If I hadn’t, I would just grab my shampoo, ignore the attempts to systematically deconstruct my self worth, and get the heck out of dodge. But I don’t. I go home, stew about it and then write articles like this one. True, at least I’m giving it thought and taking myself to task about it, but I still feel weak for being another casualty of the beauty machine. How I can tear my body apart and then expect to be happy living in it?

In the oppressive environment of my local apothecary, I’m often seized by the urge to rebel by doing something supremely “unladylike,” like passing gas while waiting in line for the register.  Most of all, however, I long to tell the other pharmacy casualties that there’s something perverse about these shops that harm while supposedly selling healing; and then invite them to join the farty party. I fear that the reason I don’t let a loud one rip, however, is that the images of ladyhood that I’ve been fed have penetrated deeper than I would ever want to admit.

Both as a woman and as a writer, I suffer from an inner split on the topics of sex and beauty.  My dilemma stems from the fact that I embrace sexuality and aesthetics in my life and writing, but witness daily the fallout of these industries that I must rail against. This leaves me straddling two starkly different belief systems. I enjoy watching the beautiful people in films, but bristle when that is all they are valued for; I love fashion photography, but I’m against the promotion of anorexia and insecurity; I’m a supporter of frank portrayals of carnality, but not of the objectification that often accompanies explicit coupling on camera. As you can imagine, these polarized ideals present many challenges.

I trace some of this ambivalence to adolescence. Because they are not the focus of this piece, I will spare you a viewing of my teenage psychic scars; but I will say this: receiving external affirmation of a body that has changed and betrayed you at every turn is deeply baffling.  When someone complimented my appearance at, say, 13, I remember feeling like the real me was some sort of beastie that had everyone fooled, working the levers inside of a normal-looking teenage girl. 

But, even more than that, I remember the relief in discovering that I did not resemble the ogre that I often felt like because of all the shocking physical transformations I was undergoing. The craving for that spark of recognition becomes deeply ingrained in the teenage girl and the grown woman can spend a lifetime coaxing it out. I dealt with this by becoming the class clown. I sought to gain the acknowledgment I longed for by making people laugh; but even a clown stands in front of the mirror wondering if she’s ever really seen by the people around her.

I have been trying to make myself stop asking that question since adolescence. This involves discarding the parts of myself that I acquired through the pull of societal imperative and seeing what remains. One clear case of this was my abandonment of the Brazilian bikini wax. The last time an unfriendly woman briskly tore my hair from down there, it occurred to me that it was time to go au naturale. Just to be clear, this doesn’t mean that I think any woman with a landing strip is not liberated. In fact, if there’s anything I’ve learned from my own struggles with these issues, it’s not to judge anyone for their decisions because they have a metaphorical pharmacy of their own to face. 

The whole Brazillian episode led me to wonder why industry-designated sexy is so sterile and, well, unsexy. We lose so much of ourselves when we’re convinced that we must eliminate all bodily reality in order to be attractive. Sure, I put the kibosh on the Brazillian because it was painful and because it seemed perverse to undergo that pain to fit some societal ideal; but there was something else, too. It suddenly dawned on me that, if I defined sexiness as embracing the unstoppable forces that are our bodies and their needs, defacing my private areas in the name of sexiness was the pinnacle of unsexy. 

With consumer society behind it, the cult of beauty is a stubborn rival. It seems that all this purchased “hotness” is supposed to land me the only perk the world believes to be the provenance of women—sexual power. But what of my potency that doesn’t adhere to that ideal? I remember asking a friend in college if anyone had ever made any comments about her armpit growth.  She turned to me, smiled beatifically, and asked, “Would it matter if they had?” She had a point. 

It seems that the only way to claim your right to be just-as-you-want-to-be starts by unapologetically being just that; and I admit that I’m still working on getting there. I will keep striving to rebel against my daily dose of beauty brainwashing by examining my beliefs while blasting Patti Smith, but it would be nice to live in a culture that didn’t dose me to begin with. I’ll tell you one thing, if I discover that my pharmacy has a cream or powder for a hairy woman with opinions, I’m revolting.

Originally published on Sex in the Public Square

Autobiography

1) I have used Time Out of Mind to get over every heartbreak.

2) I have a pretty unusual birthmark on my right leg that’s not your typical pretty thing, but it’s my favorite.

3) I wore a Greek Sailor's cap and saddle oxfords for an entire year in 5th grade, and let me just say that they weren't big with the boys. Did I mention I had braces then?

 4) The year that my best friend and I lived together, we did all of the following: made an apocalyptic art project from junk we found on the street; ate many tubs of hummus and hot sauce; and purchased fake buck teeth and a curly wig that we wore frequently in the privacy of our home.

 5) Unkind is never okay.

 6) When I like something, I could do it all day, every day.

 7) Two of my favorite ways to spend a day: rescuing wonderful books that people are trying to throw away and going to the movies alone; but you have to remember to buy treats at the movie—always treats.

 8) I’d like to turn out as some mixture of Vladimir Nabokov, Charlie Kaufman, and Napoleon Dynamite. They are the cat’s pajamas

9) I still find bathroom humor humorous.

 10) And I hope I always do.

Herb and Dorothy

 

If you recall my first post on The National Arts Club, that same enthusiastic Chairwoman, Sharyn Grossman, inspired me to join their film committee; and after last night’s showing of Megumi Sasaki’s documentary, Herb and Dorothy (2008), I couldn't be happier that I did.

It’s one of those documentaries that reminds you why you love film, and in this case, why you love art.  The Arts Club was an appropriate place to have this epiphany, as it has housed the work of some remarkable artists over the years, including that of Will Barnett, an artist featured in the documentary.

The film was so striking because of Herb and Dorothy Vogel themselves; on the salary of a postal worker and a librarian, they have quietly amassed one of the most formidable contemporary art collections in history. Oh, and did I mention that when it came time to share it with a museum, they gave it to the National Gallery…for free?

The images of these two white-haired people--Dorothy smiling serenely, and maybe a little shyly, and Herb smirking in that mischievous way some older men have--milling around their tiny apartment stuffed full of turtles, cats, and art is very touching. They never had kids, and as they proudly show us their treasures, it becomes clear that the art has been their children.

The Vogels purchased pieces based on what really moved them. As the director pointed out during the question and answer session that followed the showing, the Vogels remind us that art is not about acquiring some esoteric vocabulary, but about looking and loving.

One man in the audience patiently waited his turn and then asked how he could start a collection. There was a pause as the Vogels puzzled over someone who had allowed so many thoughts to come between his eye and his heart. "You just start buying stuff you like," Dorothy answered. 

Featuring artists from Christo and Jeanne-Claude to Chuck Close, the film is a Valentine to contemporary art and the people who love it.

Top 20 Books

(for now, and in no particular order; underlying theme = obsession)
 

1)    House of Leaves--Mark Danielewski

2)    Underworld--Don DeLillo

3)    My Name is Red--Orhan Pamuk

4)    The Corrections--Jonathan Franzen

5)    Infinite Jest--David Foster Wallace

6)    Gravity’s Rainbow--Thomas Pynchon

7)    Pale Fire--Vladimir Nabokov

8)    Ulysses--James Joyce

9)    The Wind-up Bird Chronicle--Haruki Murakami

10) The Ghost Writer--Philip Roth

11) The Waves--Virginia Woolf

12) Written on the Body--Jeanette Winterson

13) Jitterbug Perfume--Tom Robbins

14) The Tunnel--William H. Gass

15) Absalom, Absalom--William Faulkner

16) Ada or Ardor--Vladimir Nabokov

17) Sexing the Cherry--Jeanette Winterson

18) Lolita--Vladimir Nabokov

19)  The White Hotel--D.M. Thomas

20)  The Floating Opera--John Barth

Papa's Song

I was born like a loud sound,
straight from the mouth like a holler,
vibrating still on this shaking planet,
a missile seeking life.

Those were the days,
while walking somnambulate, 
our hands tied together with fingers,
that you would sing out those syllables 
that were home to me.

I would wade in your words
as you sang “Sweet Caroline” 
in English and Spanish, 
secretly squeezing my hand
as the water of happiness
drummed down my brain drain.

Those were the days
when your hair was black.
Now it’s white, lightly colored
like our mornings then, when I learned
to talk you, breathe  you, and then sing you
from rooftops silent with snow.

You were the pied piper papa
and I would have followed you anywhere
just to be your little girl, to hear you sing
in two tongues and then lay an abacus at my feet,
telling me to find my own numbers;
and papa, I have.

Those were the days
you would pretend to be “ghosty,” 
a voice that mysteriously seeped
out of hidden places only when you were there.
It took me years to discover that it was you
all along, just bloated with a love
powerful enough to transform
everyday things into wonders.

I would come to you seething with pain
and you would make your voice into a tonic
for me to drink while recovering my words.
The taint of sorrow gone, coming back to life, 
my body would bristle and gleam
and I was happy again, as you sat quietly,
still holding me.

Those were the days
when eyes enlarged, insistent, 
I would say, “read me a story.”
Then you would speak the language of rays, 
the tones began in your heart,
cave-big, giving, benevolent, you,
and I always listened, wide-mouthed
as my giant of the land told me of dream kings
and other beautiful things. 

Now I have 27 winters behind me.
No longer a crying child, the round cheeks you gave me
usually shiver with the light of some laughter,
but my heart is still wandering our same streets, 
murmuring the words to the same songs,
still singing you, papa, still singing you.

Ten Signs that You Should Scrap that Piece of Writing

 
Every writer faces this proverbial fork in the road: You have pounded out what you hope will be the creation that will transform the literary landscape, but you smell something rotten and fear it may be your writing.

Sometimes this is merely the overactive inner critic; but most of the time this is the voice that will save your literary career. It’s a fine line, but one that must be examined.

Just remember, the great, sprawling masterpieces actually require more fine-tuning. The greatest writers are often virtuosic nitpickers and visionary verbal mechanics, always tinkering with and adjusting the written word.

It’s important to learn to recognize when something is not perfect as is; when it needs more editing; and even when it needs to be scrapped—as heartbreaking as that is.

Just remember, it’s possible that your piece is brilliant but misunderstood, but it’s also possible that it’s time to take the garbage out. 

Here are some signs to help you determine when it is time to move on to new printed pastures:

1) If it needs explanation, apology, or perverse amounts of liquor to be enjoyed.

2) If you have an inexplicable itch to tell your editor that your cat ate it.

3) If you recall reading something almost exactly like it, but it’s not, like, plagiarism; and what the heck, people love nostalgia…right?

4) If you privately wish someone would hack into your computer and give it a little character.

5) If you use the phrase “that is to say” more than you actually say.

6) If it came to you in a dream, on acid, on a spiritual retreat, or on the toilet.

7) If you’d rather drive a needle through your eye than reread it.

8) If you think it could best be described as “Proustian.” 

9) If your protagonist is a hooker with a heart of gold that is not played by Julia Roberts.

10) If you think it would be a pitch-perfect candidate for a verbal lobotomy.

Question of the Week

If Megan Fox is "self-manufactured," what are all these hands doing to her at the beauty factory?

 

Film Noir

Film Noir has darkened my mind, but lit a little light inside. When I close my eyes, I see fatal women.

 

The Sound of a Broken Reed

 

Charley Gerard, the director and composer for the Broken Reed Saxophone Quartet (BRSQ), possesses a rare collection of talents not often seen together.  Versatile and virtuosic in his playing and composition, he has a way of coaxing the beautiful from the unexpected. With his diverse influences—from jazz and swing to Latin and classical—and his liberal tapping of the imagination, his arrangements are thoughtful and exuberant, and his performances are as formally impeccable as they are playful. 

You have only to hear his recreation of the Vivaldi Classic, “Four Seasons, Four Saxes, New Four-Casts” in The Sound of a Broken Reed to know that you are listening the work of a deeply talented composer. Gerard fuses fun listening with dissonant sound. He is even good at the elusive, imprecise science of improvisation, while maintaining a strong sense of control when playing his arrangements.  His headier music often functions as a mosaic—artistically assembled bits of sound strung together by his expert composing and the perceptive performances from the BRSQ group members. Together, they transport their audience everywhere, from New Orleans jazz clubs and the swinging sixties, to the Baroque period and the pages of poetry and popular culture. 

The BRSQ is comprised of five players that rotate in the quartet--Chris Bacas, Jenny Hill, Alden Banta, and Tom Olin, in addition to Gerard.  As its name implies, the group is as linked by its sense of humor as it is by its unique sound. The group does justice to Gerard’s innovative compositions; the diverse and extensive experience of each of the members is amply reflected back in the cumulative sound. 

"A Whole Lotta Led: A Suite of Led Zeppelin Songs" (including “Whole Lotta Love,” “Heartbreaker,” “Dazed and Confused,” “Kashmir,” and “Loving Maid”) are recompositions that yield a seamless, super stylish Zeppelin-Gerard hybrid that will knock your musical socks off. The songs feature unlikely, yet ultimately satisfying, pairings. The strength of this section stems from the highly literate nature of Gerard’s music.  His compositions don’t merely speak to one another; they engage in dialogue with the whole history of music, resulting in unusual and extraordinary creations, such as “A Whole Lotta Led.”

Gerard wrote “Rock Garden,” in his twenties.  Its final movement, “Now Start Again,” is a remarkable piece. It opens with a fugue and closes with a technically impressive musical conversation, or really more of a shared monologue, between the saxes.  This is one of the places where Gerard’s music takes on that mosaic quality--revealing music to be a series of intercommunicating sounds that form a whole only by “talking” to one another.  With its formally impressive structure that somehow yields a playful sound, the piece is one of the Broken Reed’s best.  

They say great texts play with one another and the same holds true for music. The humor in some of BRSQ's more serious pieces highlight their earnestness and this lively weight renders them achingly alive.

Portrait of the Poet as a Teenager

Inside me there is a skirted issue

beginning to bare leg, a measles of infrastructure
so vast and vat deep that I am beginning
to see earth worms ascending while I sleep,
the true knowers of the blackness.

I like to write like this.
I like to sit before my night window
and cry for no reason, I like to bask
in the casualty of sorrow

I am sitting in my chair trying to make a decision
I am sitting in my head trying to make a decision
I am sitting in my decision trying to make a decision
and coming up empty every time.

My beautiful mistakes haunt me 
like the radioactive  candy apple at the fair
that I never should have  eaten.
As a poet, I have grown accustomed
to hanging my life on a sign post
so that I am always three feet away
from being exposed.

There is in me a leaving of home
mourned years before it happened.
I cry for a place I never had,
years before it was gone.

It’s hard to avoid filling the painful moments
where self is right up against
the sand paper tongue of experience,
or to put it in my own words
instead of bookish pram:

How difficult it is to feel pain come apounding
and not turn a deaf eye on it,
to drown out the dance of the vengeful fairies 
with a stout brew of human howling.

Afterwards, when things grow quiet,
there is a tremor on the inner side of my skin
and I expand and regrow in the forever
 of that one silent moment.

I never stop speaking and writing,
jitterbugging my mouth onward,
as though the more speech I release, 
the closer I come to expressing 
the whole of me in music
like the slurrings of the dylanous Bob,
an untuned tribute to the uneditations of my sound.

Sometimes I sit alone on benches at night,
surveying the medicine cabinet of time,
without the glamour of moonlight
and say, "this is just so, this is just so."

Mornings, I awake to the sound of my own breath
folding my arms like shortened stilts,
body loosened with sleep, and say, “this is me.”
Other times, eyes covered in scales, with a trembling from within,
the smoky shape of pain, I must touch hands to face,
whispering, “this is still me.”

Strained seams of sadness run through my body,
which would be a forest if these feelings were trees.
Pained laughter, summits of laughing gas sorrow, fill the air.
Yesterday I sat, chaired and loaded, sentencing,
warily dipping fingertips into mind,
giving coffee water to my soggy brain. 

Too much spinning leads to nervous laughter
and thoughts that must be kept from one another.
The mania and longing, the hair tearing late nights
distilled into words.

I am reddened, raw and tender.
I sit here with all this mangled light inside me,
coming to the surface, water swirling, inevitable
froglegging to my world without end.
Internal swaying of reeds captivate more
than earth’s sinking shadows, so I stay.

Cut me open and you will find words,
smoky, deconstructed sentences, a multiverse of language
that builds huge structures while I’m not looking.
Hunched on this rainy night, waiting,
window coated by light-discovered drops of rain,

suddenly, written water starts to flow.

The thought land uncovered tells me secrets.
Listening, I write them down obediently. 
I float narratively backwards, letting my fallen words
drift behind me. In me is the windmill of rebirth, 
reinvented wing-shadows unhinged.

These words are tiny sky-aspiring ink legends 
that know so well the earthen ballad,
but blind and tongueless, they know nothing
of the work they do. Sitting here, I can sense
my remembered hallucination-life.

Positioned towards so many memory encoded moments
set to be reversed in sky-logic, I am drawing
pleasure and pain sketches in my ruled notebook.
These lettered entrances to my netherlands,
my recombined alphabet stew, makes this fallen alien life
feel more familiar somehow.

I am walking through some thought forest,
my limbs beating time with the tentacles of trees.
these woods have become my night playground,
my inexplicable junglegym, and I need nothing more
than tonight.

Weather vane points to the second chapter of memoir-to-be,
uncanny these summered texts so ripe with beginning,
wise with knowing their own illiteracy,
reading instead the unremembered lyric,
the wizard, the word.

The K&K Gallery Opens in Williamsburg

Plenty of people claim to inhabit their art, but Kevin Kunstadt and Andrew Kenney have actually moved in.

With the ingenuity of trendsetting Williamburgsters, these two have converted their storefront living space into the K&K Gallery.

I went to their opening on Friday night and was impressed with the thoughtfully paired photographs, whose tones were alternately luminous and shadowy, abstract and focused, quiet and loud.

We showed up well after 10 and the crowd was still milling about, admiring the art, dancing to music, spilling out onto the street.

Tucked behind a curtain were the artists’ rooms, a lone moped, and what might have been my favorite photograph of the night—an arresting shot Kunstadt took in Brazil of a helicopter just hanging out in the hazy air.

Kunstadt and Kenney are mild-mannered and refreshingly low on the pretension meter. It seems that they are the real deal: two talented, young artists who want to pry open the hermetically sealed vault of New York City art and toss some young artists in.

So take a trip to 109 Broadway in Williamsburg one of these weekends between 12 and 6 p.m. and have a look for yourself. You won’t be disappointed. 

I remember the ocean and the sun. One day I'll go back.

House of Leaves: Rewriting Reading, Writing, and History

The time has come to talk about my favorite novel. In House of Leaves, Mark Danielewski uses the house in the title as a trope for the challenges of written testimony. Here, he has secured himself a space outside of time and narrative from which to survey both. 

The inner flap reads: “House of Leaves by Zampanò with introduction and notes by Johnny Truant,” (two of the characters) with no mention of Danielewski. This is followed by an introduction from an edgy countercultural youth (Truant) who claims to have found a collection of writings in the home of an old man who has recently died (Zampanò).

The papers he finds are Zampanò’s scholarly analysis of The Navidson Record, a documentary by yet another one of Danielewski's characters, the world renowned photojournalist, Will Navidson. The film catalogues Navidson's exploration of the house he moves into on Ash Tree Lane that is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside.

With input and copious footnotes from still more authors and critics real and imagined, the text addresses the physical and psychological world that Navidson examines. The quality that makes Navidson’s house different from the average home is that it suddenly develops new doors, staircases, and hallways; and this tortuous structure becomes the novel’s central metaphor for writing.  

The labyrinth at the heart of the novel is not only a single location that the characters explore, but also a symbol of the intricate structural composition of the narratives of each of the authors, including Truant, Zampanò, Danielewski, Navidson, and even Navidson's wife, Karen, who also contributes a short film to the novel’s roster of texts. 

Since the majority of the critics and authors mentioned either do not exist, or exist but did not say what the novel claims they did, House of Leaves critiques writing's truth claims when it comes to representing individual and communal history. 

Danielewski is not at all interested in our progressing right-side-up through his literary phantasmagoria. Clearly, authorship is being turned on its head as unstable meaning is filtered through multiple creators. But how do we read a book like this? Easy: we have to change the way we read.

Danielewski is not concerned that we locate an answer; rather, he wants us to note how each new interpretation changes the labyrinth of the narrative structure.  In this way, Danielewski demonstrates that the trajectory of history, or present reality, can be altered.

That one writer’s analysis is not an absolute truth is made clear to us as readers of a heap of invented criticism.  In a novel that is comprised of stories from multiple authors, as well as criticisms of these authors that we are forced to engage with as though they were, like us, real outside readers, we are confronted with the changeable nature of written “truth.” 

In the end, the house represents not merely language, but metalanguage. It is the commentary on all stories, both fictional and historical; it's a chance to rewrite reading, writing, and history.

Going to the Movies Alone

Somehow, even after yesterday's film noir binge, there's still room for more. This is one of my favorite places to be. A screen, an overpriced soda, miniature chocolate candies, and my mind runs away from me.

I love the reacting faces of the audience. Cradled in darkness, there's a suspension of self-consciousness. I know I make my strangest faces there.

Going with someone else is a shared experience, but alone brings its own thrill. It's rare to feel that anonymous and yet so far from lonely.

There's nobody you know sitting next to you, reminding you of your other life. Your whole existence for those two hours is right there in those lights flashing through the darkness.

Vietnam Mon Amour: Remembering Full Metal Jacket

Somewhere among the Vietnamese whores, sadistic drill sergeants, and soldiers who know as little about their souls as they do about why they are fighting, there is Full Metal Jacket. From boot camp to battleground, the film explores the contours of degradation, dissolution, and destruction that was the Vietnam War. 

In the first section that takes place during recruit training, R. Lee Ermey is brutally good as Gunnery Sergeant Hartman, a man bursting with an arsenal of creatively hateful jokes. A former Marine Drill Instructor, Ermey was brought in to coach the actor they had originally chosen for the role. He was hired after yelling obscenities for fifteen minutes without flinching while being pelted with tennis balls. Now that shows real dedication to dehumanizing epithets.

The demise of Private Pyle (Vincent D’Onofrio) is one of the most disturbing in movie history. He is a weak and troubled recruit whom the protagonist Private James T. "Joker" Davis (Matthew Modine) helps out at first; but when Joker participates in his bullying instead of defending him, Private Pyle is changed forever; and the result is unforgettable. 

The wonder of Kubrick is that he can assimilate disparate emotive elements while maintaining his cerebral style. He is one of the only directors who could integrate the holy (cinematographer Douglas Milsome’s almost spiritual understanding of lighting renders the barracks otherworldly); the hilariously disturbing (Hartman’s high jinks); and the horrific (the war’s obliteration of the spirit) into one film--and often into one scene. 

Kubrick combines a light soundtrack and moments that could be accompanied by a laugh track with the dehumanization and unintentional beauty of battle. The resulting paradoxical emotions echo the sensations of war. In the end, the film's demons, at once intoxicating and repulsive, reach out of the screen and possess the viewer.

All About My Mother

There I am thinking in two directions at once,
trying to find the glasses on my head, spewing mind juice
all over my papers. Yet there must be some grace 
to this unbecoming mambo because I do it daily
in the gleam of the kitchen’s luminous eye.

Oh, lamp, you synthetic, seasonal happiness, 
shining light on my working head. You reveal what I hide.
I’ll be 27 soon and have started finding white hairs. Not just strays,
but whole colonies of snow fur. I pull them out,
bashfully at first, and then with startling violence.

They crouch together, white moles
in a field of brown, small buildings sprung
from the architecture of my years. The white sprigs,
have even spawned language to converse
with the other hair creatures, whatever those may be.
I know this because at night I hear them chattering.

My mom’s hair is white-blonde. There she is
throwing popcorn to the dog again. This is their game.
The Airedale lives for it, wiggling her blonde behind 
in gluttony, like a truck backing up, 
positioning herself  below the salty treats. 

My mother responds with her part of the act,
raining popped kernels down upon the jolly beast.
“You’re wackadoodle,” I tell her and she smiles toothily.
In this moment, time’s wormhole has made a space for us
and I understand her entirely for the first time. I reach over,
take her hand, squeeze it, and then, together,
we throw the glowing corn.

Question of the Week

Augmentation: First it was breasts, now it's reality. What's next?

Cinematic Call Girl Comparison

Charactonyms, copious hairdos, call girl chic.

Gloria Wandrous

Holly Golightly

This Gawker article gets points for its title; for giving some thought to the implications of douche as a diss; and for recognizing that the term "azzwizard" is, indeed, rather magical.

This is another photo from my pilgrimage to the Banksy Tunnel in London. It grabbed my imagination and hasn't let go. If you look closely, you can see the house I built for myself in their wings. I still live there.

The Soul?

 Photo taken in Banksy Tunnel, London

And now words, lyrics to the song I often sing,

notes passing each other with gazing recognition.
One note, eyes turned skyward, hands outstretched, 
was overheard saying, “What crazy world is this
that I am swimming, sailing past myself?”

With the elongation of certain syllables, I make a house of straw
for my head, songful as of late, to slumber in.
I sound the trumpet to make quiet the halls,
then send my flood of music, an army of fearless sound,

to clear all obstacles to the sleepy witchcraft

of my unseen soul.

But souls shouldn't be discussed in poetry;
it is tiresome, and with these words,
I sleep.

A Donnie Darko for Tots!

Finally, a Donnie Darko for tots!  Combine Donnie Darko’s apocalyptic bunny friend, preternatural phenomena and sharp commentary on contemporary society with a spoon full of sugar, and you get The Last Mimzy. The film is adapted from Lewis Padgett’s (husband and wife team C.L. Moore and Henry Kuttner) acclaimed 1943 short story, “Mimsy Were the Borogoves.” 

Their title and pseudonym allude to Lewis Carroll (Charles Ludwidge Dodgson) and his “Jabberwocky” poem from Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There.  With a score from award-winning composer, Howard Shore, including a collaboration with Roger Waters ("Hello I Love You"), the movie is a trippy affair. Like the literary works that inspired it, The Last Mimzy gazes at the world through an unusual lens. 

A first glimpse through this lens reveals a world where the kids talk like adults and worship at the altar of technology.  In keeping with the film’s motif, Noah (Chris O’Neill as one of the two sibling protagonists) loves his videogames.  His sister, Emma (Rhiannon Leigh Wryn), is a ten-year-old who peers at the world through large eyes and loves astronomy.  Leigh Wryn’s subtle performance channels the stubborn love and innocence of childhood without being overly sentimental. 

The family spends Easter vacation on Whidbey Island, whose untouched beauty serves as an antidote to modern society.  The camera follows them as they arm themselves with boogie boards to explore the natural world.  Noah and Emma find mysterious objects floating in the waves that give them powers ranging from teleportation and psychokinesis to telepathy.  

The mysterious objects also increase the children’s intelligence. Noah, an average student, suddenly spawns a genius science project using his newfound ability to communicate with spiders, while Emma’s brain development shoots off the charts.  One of the toys is a semi-organic, nanotechnological marvel in the form of a stuffed rabbit named Mimzy.  Mimzy provides Emma with information about the present and future world. Like Calvin with Hobbes, the crux of their special bond is that Emma is the only one who can understand Mimzy.  

Noah’s teacher Larry White (Rainn Wilson) serves as the children's guide to their new, supernatural world.  Larry is no average instructor. He wears an earring and tries to make the listless youngsters comprehend the cultural pollutants that are poisoning their society; however, the pencil-twirling children don’t appear overly concerned about the implications of their downward sloping civilization.  A sleepy blonde girl raises her hand and lazily inquires why “they” don’t do something.  Larry replies, “Who is this ‘they?’  ‘They’ is all of us.”

The roots of Larry’s quirks are revealed when the film takes us to his home, complete with a meditating girlfriend, Naomi (Kathryn Hahn), with whom he reminisces about prophetic dreams and trips to Tibet.  When Noah starts doodling mandalas, it is Larry who recognizes that he is drawing symbolic representations of the universe. 

As a work of art, The Last Mimzy is limited by the tender age of its audience, which is the only imaginable culprit for a corny ending after such graceful handling of difficult subject matter. As a children’s movie, however, The Last Mimzy is a gem.  The film has taken guff for being convoluted, but this is because its greatest strength and weakness is its mind-blowing ambition and originality.  Children deserve a movie that makes them think and feel.  From Lewis Carroll’s dream child to Robert Shaye’s perceptive directorial touch, The Last Mimzy is the work of creative giants.  

The Poetics of Garbage

I will never be able to fully explain why the images of floating sea garbage in the New York Times have so completely captured my imagination. Perhaps it's the title of the accompanying article, "Afloat in the Ocean, Expanding Islands of Trash." 

This headline comes to life in my mind, floating and expanding alongside so much other detritus that I allow to hover there, including my college ID number, the number of times I've been in love, and other bits of worthless preciousness.

Maybe my fascination with these photographs has something to do with Don DeLillo's Underworld changing the way I conceived of garbage. After reading it, trash was transformed from smelly refuse to metaphor for the mental and physical possessions of a people, the most fascinating of cultural artifacts.

The first thing that comes to mind when we hear "garbage" is often a sloppy remix of what we've eaten for the last few days; but what about the treasures? Going through the non-goopy portion of someone's trash reveals the truth about them. 

Counter to our capitalist education, we are not so much what we buy as what we throw out. What people purchase represents who they want to be. Shopping lists are fraught with longing. A certain kind of scarf encapsulates neatly in its fibers all that we hope to become. 

What we throw away, however, reveals who we are, whether we like it or not. The litany of litter carries a very telling rhythm of denial. We are the love letters we "didn't" read, the wrappers of whole chocolate cakes we "didn't" eat alone, and the terrible stories we "didn't" write. 

By this logic, we are all the islands of garbage that we "didn't" unleash on the floating world.

The Roadtripper's Guide to the Galaxy

This just in from the weird department: Somewhere between the highway rest stops of a road trip, my friend and I made the strange discovery that we both separated our lives into three different levels of experience; and that our accounts of them were strikingly similar.

Level One lives in the conversations and experiences of everyday life. There’s nothing wrong with this level, but there's an invisible barrier between you and something deeper that you can sense, but not see.

Level Two is a more meditative level. This is where the people who get labeled “dreamy” live. A conversation here wanders from the polite social script of a Level One, to land suddenly in the more ethereal space where words flow effortlessly between two minds, meeting briefly in the middle, mixing gently, before returning to their cerebral homes. These conversations leave one feeling peaceful, understood, and a little less alone. The best brand of Level Two can even restore hope in the world and the self.

But Level Three is another universe. Even someone who experiences transcendent moments on the regular doesn’t come here often. A Level Three will change a person forever. Like the two previous levels, it can be experienced alone or with another person. 

When alone, it looks like this: Say you’re walking to the subway and everything around you looks pretty standard, but suddenly you feel like you’re wearing a new pair of eyes, as if someone you can’t see has just put them on you and everything is different.

Nothing seems negligible; everything is luminous and renewed. You notice everything. The people moving up and down the stairs of the subway are composed of different shapes and colors. You realize that the shorthand we use kills things. Their skin isn’t beige; it’s red and blue, and there are even tinges of green.

The shapes of the buildings are not arbitrary; they are lines that meet and separate. They speak to one another and to you, asking you not to ignore the way things go together when you think they don’t, and don’t when you try to make them by thinking they do.

Everything unifies. The gleams and reflections of the streetlamps, the headlights, your newly discovered eyes, and something unseen that you somehow know is newly lit inside you, all meet in one node of white-hot sensation. The fruits of the fruit vendors are the same as the rods and cones of your eyes where all that light is being transformed into electrical signals.

A shared Level Three looks like this: You are talking to someone and he or she can receive these signals. This isn’t the average conversation where you have a thought, communicate it, and then wait to see what percentage of it has been lost in the shoddy game of telephone that passes for talking. Rather, everything else falls away till you are firing impulses like buckshot directly into the other person's brain; and neither of you will ever be the same.

Our road trip discovery of a similar taxonomy of experience was one of these rare moments. As my friend drove, the electricity of our Level Three mixed with the radio signals and the sunset outside, urging our car onward.

Love in the Age of Technology

Through the telephone, I hear

our love, a winter orchid,

strange and frozen, so far

from my fingers.

 

When I speak to you,

the distance suffocates

and the technological longing

ensues.

 

In verbal embrace,

we hold each other in an echo chamber,

our voices intertwining,

but we are not there.

The breath of us is still in me,

but the warmth of you on my skin times out

and I am only able to touch you

technologically.

Dear David Foster Wallace's Spirit, please lead me to your shuttered peaks of verbal lunacy, your beauti-full of madness word kingdom. Sincerely, your partner in longing.

Perfume: The Nose Always Knows

The impossible happened. Patrick Süskind’s “unfilmable” novel, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, was adapted for the big screen (2006). This was no easy feat because scent, the book's theme, is difficult to portray cinematically.  

Some critics have pointed to the film's political undertones, even interpreting it as an allegory of the Third Reich. The producer, Bernd Eichinger, is no stranger to this subject, having gained international acclaim for The Downfall, a Hitler biopic. Apparently, Eichinger had been bugging Süskind to let him at Perfume since its publication in 1985.  His perseverance paid off. 

The film does an impressive job with a difficult concept. Tom Tykwer (Run, Lola Run), no stranger to frenetic subject matter, had a tricky job with this tale of a homicidal perfume maker. The result is a charmingly bizarre hybrid that plays like the love child of Chocolat and Silence of the Lambs.

In this nightmarish fairytale, Jean-Baptiste Grenouille (Ben Whishaw) is born, despite his mother’s efforts to the contrary, in a filthy fish market.  The scene of his birth is perfectly executed and particularly striking; the pressure mounts as the baby’s heart struggles to pump amidst the many pounding elements of the market, climaxing in Grenouille's only real achievement— his own life.  

Years later, on a rare outing, he comes upon his first victim (Karoline Herfurth).  The camera masterfully highlights the pieces of her that obsess him; she is all bosom, shocking red hair, and plums. The search to preserve this experience through scent starts as a troubling fixation and leads to the composition of his master scent, the essences of 25 virgins, finishing with the lovely Laura (Rachel Hurd-Wood). 

Perfume is an ode to the nose; it opens with a dark shot of Grenouille’s face, with only his sniffer eerily lit. The film is slow in many places, but the result is a disturbing  examination of the horrors and pleasures of the senses. 

The Birth of the Luminous

One day I will find
a way to write you,
to make a place in words
that speaks what it is 
that causes you to shine
as if from the beginning of light.

You have entered me, brighter than
the birth of the luminous,
piercing, with quiet claws,
a never-entered space. 

I have in me a universe, and guard
closer than calm the moment
when, moving Queensward,
you listened to music
through my ears.

Weekend Waltz with the Bartender

Those who neither drink nor over-think won't recognize this dance. “What the bloody bleep is this windbag going on about?” they might ask.  But to the thought- and drink-heavy, these Friday night drinking dynamics, this weekend waltz with the bartender, will be all too familiar.

Let me write a picture for you: It's the weekend and someone, inevitably, wanted to go to a bar. I'm standing, holding my wallet. Sometimes things run smoothly and I walk away with the frothing fruit of my labors, but sometimes there are road bumps on the way to imbibing, especially if the establishment is bustling.

Now, I must be careful here. If I'm too passive, I will wait, awkwardly holding my money and conspicuously drinkless, for an inordinate amount of time. On the other hand, if I'm too pushy, I will remain similarly awkward and drinkless.

My friend and I were talking about this the other weekend, wondering whether these bartenders really didn’t see us, or whether making us stand there, dollars blowing in the beer breath, was their own bar version of philosophy, a Nietzschean will-to-power-trip.  

This power trip involves making you stand alone at the social apex of a weekend, inelegantly shifting your weight, seeking things to do with yourself, pushing strands of hair behind your ears and suddenly becoming fascinated by your phone, by your surroundings, by something in your bag, all in order to avoid making eye contact with the world of people around you who already have their drinks and are talking happily with friends.

In a way, it was easier in the days when I smoked because this waltz would be the perfect time to light up. Although, perhaps I should thank my lucky stars that I quit because if I could still smoke whenever I was in humorously uncomfortable situations, I might be dead by now.

Staging a Coup Against Writer's Block

Although I often suffer from its opposite, verbal diarrhea—that most unfortunate state in which mediocre words indiscriminately pour forth--no writer is a stranger to the dreaded squeak of the brain valve shutting off that is writer’s block.

My lexical obstruction often stems from the anxiety that what I create won’t be groundbreaking. On bleak days, I suffer from premonitions of shame—the nagging foreknowledge that what I’m fervently typing away at won’t be something that will cause me to beam.  Yet I find that in writing, as in life, that stranglehold of perfectionism will only assure that I create less, both qualitatively and quantitatively. 

In my bouts of blockage, the act of going on is what is commonly referred to as a leap of faith; but on a deeper level, it’s what Kierkegaard (the originator of the concept) actually called it, a leap to faith. You don’t leap with knowledge that everything will be okay; rather, the great hope on the other side of the leap is faith itself.

The concept is so stunning not because it is without doubt, but because it exists in the face of it. You will never stop having writer’s block, but you do have to take that writing leap, even when you have no faith that you’ll reach the other side of tour de force. In the end, the coup you stage is not against the block, but against your own voice that whispers, “you don’t have it in you.”

Abstract concepts aside, the single most effective laxative that I’ve found to combat textual constipation is stubbornness. You just have to storm past it, treating it as though it isn’t even there. How do you do this? By never allowing yourself to stop writing, even if you fear that it’s a load of hooey that will culminate in kindling; even if all you’re writing over and over is, “I’m a hack,” you must keep on writing. Sure, your output might look a little like Jack Torrance’s in The Shining from time to time, but you’re a writer; you’re allowed to be a little screwy.

 

 

Sometimes, when it gets to be a certain kind of dark, I get that childhood feeling that I just might disappear. 

Katt Williams' Pimpadelic

With a name like Pimpadelic, I wasn’t expecting this interweaving of  footage from an interview with comedian Katt Williams (First Sunday, Norbit, Friday After Next) and clips from one of his performances to be quite so cerebral. The whip-smart Williams reveals himself to be a man with a mission, constantly striving to reach the next level of comedy.

The portrait that he paints of the comedian is not, as he puts it, a “happy-go-lucky” one. He stresses that the jester’s role is one of hard work, copious preparation and the attitude of a disbeliever--a trust no one sensibility that keeps the mind sharp.

In his assessment of the methods behind his success, we start to recognize the degree of thought that goes into each gag; but his greatest gag is his transformation in the name of humor. The soft-spoken, brainy guy in the interview emerges onstage as the pimped-out, loud-mouthed purveyor of the “N” word.  Yet, when he describes the 5-blunt rotation of chilling with Snoop as a “ghetto track meet,” we see Williams the wordsmith again.

This guy is darn funny, and the intelligence that crouches behind his façade of inanity makes him darn funnier. His quips are built on a keen understanding of sociopolitical issues that is framed as an ignorance of them. Pimpadelic reveals Williams to be what all of the best comics are, an irreverent cultural commentator. 

The Future of Media

Where Are We Now?

It’s no secret that recent changes in media have radically recast our world. Our lives have become data for us to slice, dice and share with other slicers and dicers. Of course, this invites certain snafus, but it also opens up whole new galaxies of innovative possibility. People are no longer willing to take their cues from Big Brothers. With the rise of social media, citizen journalism and user-generated content, everyone can be a part of the conversation—and usually about a thousand conversations at once. As we can see from the current measure of the human attention span--the ubiquitous 140 characters or less--with new formats come changes in how we absorb information. I realized that I had caught the multitasking bug when I found myself listening to a podcast while reading an article. Some claim that this sort of thinking in two directions at once is more productive, while others argue that it hinders retention. For me, it depends on the day. There are times when I can barely focus and times that I swear I could wash my hair, devour my daily news and write an article all at once. Please note, I am usually wrong about this one, a fact that becomes all too obvious when I emerge with dirty hair, no new knowledge and a page full of excrement. What is Our Media Future? Although everyone’s trying, nobody can predict the future of media--not even Eric Schmidt, the superhero I like to call MediaMan--but I will add one more opinion to the fray. Although everything seems to be migrating online, this doesn’t mean that the mobs chanting “print is dead” are entirely correct. People are still reading books and magazines in paper form. I’m guessing that print will take on a role akin to radio in the time of the televisual—functioning as a supplemental tool in the the annals of knowledge. I think the biggest change, however, will be in outlook. More and more, identities and ideas will be viewed as democratic and dynamic rather than static. This will lead to a climate in which the media is for the people and by the people, with all the innovation and mess that comes with that shining ideal. This trend can be seen in the new Twitter lists. People are no longer awaiting official tastemakers; they are forming their own tastes and then unleashing them on the world. It will be interesting to see the transformations these imagined communities of social media undergo. When I look into my cultural crystal ball, I see a future in which countless pieces of moveable text have replaced facts in our understanding of knowledge. Ultimately, if you’ll pardon a technologically antiquated metaphor (I’m over 25 now, practically over the hill), a given community will be defined less by its music and more by its cultural mixtape. Excuse me, I have some mixing to do.

Things I Wish I Saw More Of

Rebels

Redheads

Female cabbies

Flying trapezes

Cartoon characters come to life

Cars driving themselves

Trumpets and horns

Freckles and moles

Monocles on someone besides Mr. Peanut

Talking horses other than Ed

A repository of intellectual provocation 

All the teeth the tooth fairy took together at last

The Brave New World of Cultural Curation

Recently I've become really interested in the concept of cultural curation, or the aggregation of floating, creative tidbits that hover all around us, on the internet and in books, films and mouths.  

Curation, often thought of as the exclusive domain of cultural institutions, such as museums and galleries, has evolved to encompass other media. 

In digital curation, electronic data are collected and preserved, or put in simpler terms, you collect the cool stuff you find online and share it with others.  

This new way of conceiving of curation not only represents a shift in media, but it also presents a sort of paradigm shift, with the figurative replacing the literal in many cases. 

When you expand the significance of curation, it's no longer limited to concrete exhibits; these days, many brave souls seek to curate the mental.  

Instead of going to a musuem and enjoying a collection of paintings, you might frequent certain blogs where you savor  ideas, memes, snippets of digitalia.  

One of the most marvelous examples of such a site is Brain Pickings. Here, Maria Popova leverages her own substantial mental dexterity to take the concept of curation to new levels. She goes beyond data collection to ideological revolution.  

Her aim is to zero in on new or overlooked thoughts that have the power to change everything. Here's a cultural tip, take a look at her site and replace that tired, old apple with an epiphany a day.

Strangers in a Strange (Wine) Land

California’s wine country is full of stories and that wacky grape elixir has a way of drawing them all out. There’s a lot to keep track of in Sonoma and Napa because both the wines and the people serving them present you with items to store in your mental bank--names, histories, characters.

A woman that we met at one of the friendlier wineries had left her Office Space style job in Jersey City to work at a Napa winery and play in an Electro-Bluegrass band (talk about a change of life). She had lively eyes and was able to draw deep connections between the complexity of the wine and the larger world around it. When I left, I felt like I had had a life lesson rather than just a wine lesson.

“This one would go really well with a grilled eggplant,” she told us as we sipped, reminding ourselves not to guzzle. As she offered up more food pairing suggestions, she followed the geometry of our drinking motions with those alive eyes of hers as though she were lending us her lover rather than merely pouring us wine.

Everyone we met was as passionate about wine, but not everyone was as sweet as old lively eyes. After our tour of the Robert Mondavi Winery, we sat around the table, tasting what we had ostensibly just learned how to make. The MC of this event was the punchy tour guide whose obvious pride in the Mondavi wine empire impressed us, but whose obvious resentment of the people on the tour and their questions, didn’t.

From the look she gave us when we drank our Pinot Noir too quickly to experience the metamorphosis it undergoes upon exposure to air, we knew it was strike three; but we just weren’t clear on what the previous two strikes had been. By this point, with a good deal of mental snickering, I had begun logging our faux pas in the inner notebook of my mind to be deposited here later. They ranged from minor gaffe to egregious indiscretion in the etiquette of wine tasting department.

Our gaffe involved fluttering excitedly to two generously-pouring wineries in the course of 15 minutes without eating first, and having to take a lengthy walk through the vineyard--shotgunning tortilla chips from an earlier Mexican meal all the while--before we could get back on the road.

We committed our chief indiscretion (that proves its richness by making me laugh even as I write this) at our second winery. We entered, buoyed by the confidence of not having made fools of ourselves at our first winery, only to flub the last tasting at our second. We were genteelly (we hoped) sipping what we would only realize later to be one of the best wines of the trip--a peppery white wine for which my mouth still waters, and I am not a white wine gal--when it happened.

I suppose neither of us were paying too much attention, so busy were we with smiling stupidly at each other and clinking our glasses together every single time we drank. After we clacked our newest samples and grinningly sipped, we confessed to the wine lady that there was something a little odd about the last vino; she had described the heavenly tones we could expect and they were nowhere to be found.

She summoned the kindest smile she could and said, “I thought it was strange that you were cheersing with the water, but to each his own.” In our embarrassment, we quickly did the only worse thing we could, and briskly chugged the water intended to be poured out after it had done its cleaning job, in one shamed gulp.

Yet our trip was not limited to shaming. It was frequently filled with kind, wise, wine souls, like sailors who knew and loved every dip of the waves. A woman at one of the last wineries we went to had black hair and the face of a 40-year-old, though she swore she was 60 (it must be the health properties of the wine, I knew we were both thinking).

She poured for her customers in a room covered with pictures of Marilyn Monroe and she was just as pretty. When she saw that we loved the red Zinfandel, she pulled out the Reserve, which she swore she never gave to anyone. We were happy, whether or not her oath held true.

The highlight of the evening, however, came when we all got a bit more comfy (read: buzzed) and one very elegant woman pulled smelly cheeses out of her Louis Vuitton bag, telling me I could “cut her cheese” whenever I pleased. Now, that’s wine country for you. Over the course of the trip, many wine and food gurus tried to convert me to the jubilant California wino way of life. I must say, as I thought of the sad-angry faces of my fellow subway mates, I was almost converted.

Tips for the Indie Filmmaker

This is a bit of an oldie but a goodie, but here is my summary of the tips on indie filmmaking to come out of the "Produced By" conference:

 

In short, to make it in the movie industry, know your audience and fundraise "Obama-style." If you want to earn some dough, ditch the genre films.  For a surefire indie darling, make movies about people that are Jewish, French, or gay, and put "wedding" in the title.  Take heart, it's not all "doom and gloom" because the internet is your "ray of hope." Oh, and if you want to make an environmental documentary, apparently all you have to do is call the producer and ask him if he likes the electric guitar.