Aslam Karachiwala: methinks: Home

New Again

Sun, 01 Jan 2006 11:02:16 GMT

A lot happened this year, apparently, but I know that a lot didn't happen this year. I guess that's the case with every year. Well, it ain't this year anymore, it's already next year, and I have an apartment full of hot men, asleep, who seem less bothered about my mess than I. One of them just knocked on my door to see why I was still awake.

The evening began with a nice albariño, and moved on to mojitos and tsunami cocktails, riding a sumptuous feast of fish and chicken curries, and chhole, and sambhar, and baked duck, and pork with sauerkraut, fueled with basmati rice and Italian and French breads.

We watched the episodes of Boondocks that I had taped, and laughed. I declared that Mr. McGruder deserved a Presidential Medal of Honor.

Chocolates and cookies also graced our palates off and on, and some folks left to seek the comfort of their own beds, but only after being entertained by the humor that the libations released from the rigors of our intellects.

A digit changed, but life remains the same. What more could I ask for, while I try like hell to be more like myself?

Brokeback Mountain, TMAGC *

Wed, 21 Dec 2005 00:52:21 GMT

* TMAGC = The Movie About Gay Cowboys

Was I glad to have the good folks on TV tell me what I'd really be seeing before I went to see this movie! Without their investigative journalism, how would I know that its actual title was Brokeback Mountain, The Movie About Gay Cowboys? Calling it just Brokeback Mountain in the credits and the posters was of course a marketing ploy to draw in unsuspecting moviegoers wanting to see a sweeping, picturesque love story from the American West, where rugged sons of the frontier, like the Marlboro Man, once freely roamed. However, to be fair, even though they weren't regular cowboys, they smoked many a manly cigarette throughout the movie, so the advertising wasn't entirely false.

Come to think of it, the movie was a sweeping, picturesque love story from the American West. But, the cowboys weren't exactly roaming free. They worked for this guy, see, who put all sorts of rules on where they could go, and what they could do, and he decided whether and how much they'd get paid. As I said, they were not regular cowboys, no real sons of the frontier. So, anyways, well, there's now all this hype about this big Hollywood romantic epic. Not that I like these chick-flicks, but, if you gotta see one of those, there's no reason to pick one that's also tragic, now, is there?

You know what, though? I can't explain it, but the tragedy in this movie makes sense somehow. Maybe because it's not about regular cowboys. Hmmm...that Annie Proulx sure wrote a compelling story:

It is a story about two inarticulate, confused Wyoming ranch kids in 1963 who have left home and who find themselves in a personal sexual situation they did not expect, understand nor can manage. The only work they find is herding sheep for a summer some cowboys! Yet both are beguiled by the cowboy myth, as are most people who live in the state, and Ennis tries to be one but never gets beyond ranch hand work; Jack settles on rodeo as an expression of the Western ideal. It more or less works for him until he becomes a tractor salesman. Their relationship endures for 20 years, never resolved, never faced up to, always haunted by fear and confusion.

I'll never think of cowboys in the same way again -- maybe I will, but that's beside the point. Ang Lee has indeed made "a great American love story" that deserves a place among the best Hollywood romances. You can take my word for it, because my senses had to labor to accomodate this movie, just like they usually do when in the midst of a Hollywood movie experience. It's duly impeccable and heartfelt, with superlative performances...speaking of which, it was Heath Ledger's excellent performance that sustained my senses through the two-plus hours of not-so-unearned emotion.

What can I say? This genre doesn't do much for me, but the movie stayed with me despite that. Honestly, I'm not sure if I wanted to run out of the theater because it was predictably depressing or depressingly predictable. So there you have it. This movie ain't bad, but I'm not sure I liked it.

Virtual Eclipse

Mon, 12 Dec 2005 03:19:30 GMT

He awoke to a dream. The day stretched before him, pristine, and pregnant with unrealized potential. This alliterative prospect made him smile, as he gazed at the gap in the window blind, where a piece of a slat had broken off. Sunlight streaked through the gap, landing on the duvet enclosed down comforter, where it would have lit his penis if it weren't for the Winter lingering into early Spring.

The coffee machine clicked on, and soon he heard it percolate. He felt fortunate to be living in a time when gadgets could anticipate the needs they needed to fill. After stretching quietly under the comforter, arms and feet slowly creeping out, so as not to perturb the morning of possibility, he slipped out from under the comforter, expertly assumed a position orthogonal to his previous plane of being, at the same time deftly locating and slipping on yesterday's boxer briefs, which he had discarded in his sleep.

In the kitchen, the perfect cup of coffee was waiting for him in the domed coffee bay -- half full, precisely creamed and sugared, and at the temperature that would keep it in the tongue burning range that he liked for the duration of the sipping. The dome opened upon his approach. A tray emerged from a slot in the base, it presented a spoon. This was the latest interface innovation that finally seemed to be stemming the decline of the intangible quality (IQ) factor of the world's qualities of life, which he still liked to call by their old-fashioned name, "gadgets." He stirred the coffee with the spoon, and watched the cloud of cream rise up and dissolve into the black of the coffee, forming a steaming, rich, milky brown. Having stirred it himself, his coffee now had the human touch of imperfection, and this IQ was worth every pretty penny he paid for it.

He carried the coffee to the living room, where he had pulled up all the window blinds the previous night, in preparation for today. He wanted the light to come right in. Sitting down on the world's most comfortable couch, he activated his quality hub to connect to the world. A holographic portal appeared before him, as he took his first sip of the high IQ coffee, a fitting start for his first day of nurturing all that constituted his neglected promise. His eyes welled up as he peered into the portal. This was it. Everything everyone had put forth to make their mark in the world was within the reach of his senses.

Behind him, outside the windows, the sun moved and shone on him. He did not notice. Soon the coffee ran out, and more was made. He found himself bewildered in a world created by others. There were qualities of all stripes everywhere, with values leveraged by all kinds of stalwarts, in all manners of groundbreaking creativity. Eventually the sun gave up, and left. The replicated daylight that came on didn't single him out to shine on. Although weary, and dejected, from his first day of world skimming, he would not let himself avert his bleary senses from the portal.

The sun returned the next morning, but this time, when its light landed on the comforter, he wasn't under it. The coffee bay had learned not to offer the spoon, since he never used it after the first couple of times; he had ceased to discern the IQ factor. When the sun moved, it found him on the couch, exactly where it had left him the previous day. It shone on him again, in vain.

Sustenance

Wed, 07 Dec 2005 03:20:03 GMT

His eyes lied. Their gaze from the rust-stained, cracked mirror cast a shadow on the face they inhabited. It was a face that had long lost its identity to an unkempt beard. His blank stare into the mirror was drawn into the flickering, but warm, glow emanating from those eyes. This is how it would always start. Mesmerized by that trembling glow, he'd allow his empty stare to get pulled in, and illuminated. Soon he'd be hooked on the glow, all his desperate defenses subverted by its warmth, which he'd end up sustaining with his being, or so he remembered. The memory bordered on the fantastic, and was fuzzy on how he ended up back on the outside, again staring at his eyes.

He wasn't going to fall for it again. This time his stare would not give in, he would not let it. He knew that the glow behind those eyes came not from a candle, but a chimera, for no lit candle could endure a lifetime. So, he locked his stare defiantly on the eyes, which looked back without resolve or suspicion. Fearing being tricked, he fortified his stare. His jaw clenched, as did his fists. Still, the eyes didn't alter their gaze, but he wasn't going to take any chances, he was going to stare those eyes down this time.

The next thing he knew, he was squeezing shaving cream on to his palm. His face was no longer in a shadow. He caught a glimpse of his eyes, as he spread the shaving cream over his beard. He saw in them his hands cradling a burning candle.

[Nothing to see here.]

Mon, 05 Dec 2005 23:39:46 GMT

No Need to Click Here - I'm just claiming my feed at Feedster feedster:5baea64577f3edf77b0b2447aa634d2c

The Story

Fri, 23 Sep 2005 07:38:14 GMT

Zeitgeist Stage Company,
at BCA Plaza Black Box, Boston Center for the Arts,
through September 24.

After seeing this play by Tracey Scott Wilson, I learned of the controversy over the captions of the two news photographs of the recent hurricane aftermath in New Orleans. A black man, seen in chest-deep water, was described as carrying an item "looted" from a grocery store; while a white pair, in a similar photograph, was described as having "found" the bread and soda that they were carrying. Is it likely that the reporters had witnessed how their respective subjects acquired the items, and that the captions indeed reported the facts? Yes. It is also likely that racial stereotypes played a role in the (possibly unconscious) judgements that led to these captions. Worse still, it is likely that there was an intentional misrepresentation in the captions. Perhaps an investigation would determine the truth with some certainty, and even then it might remain elusive...remember OJ?

We have, by and large, accepted the unacceptability of human inequity, and all but banished it from our consciouness. The version of truth thus built is corroborated by the visible signs of the equity we have attempted to engineer. The inequity, however, remains in exile. It is, we (perhaps unconsciously) hope, safely contained in our prisons, including those we call "bad neighborhoods," "projects," and the like. Occasionally it spills out of its confines and shamelessly disrupts the truth of our controlled equity. In The Story I saw this disruption, in which the truth, whatever it is, ends up mangled, like in the brouhaha over the hurricane photographs.

Yvonne (Nydia Calón) is an ambitious reporter with a resumé stamped with prestigious academic brand-names, and a facility with languages. She is also black. She considers her initial assignment to the lifestyle section of a newspaper to be a stepping stone to the more substantial metro section. To her boss, Pat (Michelle Dowd), and colleague, Neil (Keedar Whittle) -- both also black -- she is an "uncertain sister," uncomfortable with her blackness and disloyal to it. They see the evidence of this in her eagerness to move from their hard-won Afro-centric section to one that is not. Could they be correct? She does after all have a white boyfriend, Jeff (Gabriel Field), in the metro section, who is also a "trust-fund baby," and who doesn't want her to make their relationship known at work, because the environment is "edgy" about inter-racial matters.

A story with which she could make her mark falls into Yvonne's lap when a young, black teenager, Latisha (Chantel Nicole Bibb), confesses to her that she was the one who shot the white teacher, whose murder in a black neighborhood has been all over the news. Yvonne connects with Latisha, who, like Yvonne, comes from an affluent background, is smart and a polyglot, and complains about her classmates at her private school expecting her to know the ways of "the hood." Latisha explains being a member of a gang as a way to live the stereotype that she is expected to be.

Pat is none too happy with Yvonne's pursuit of this "crime story." She worries that this "truth" will reinforce the notion of black criminal pathology, which is among the many misperceptions that she has passionately struggled to counter. She dispatches Neil to find a more palatable telling of the story. Neil discovers that Yvonne has fabricated the credentials on her resume, which of course calls into question the veracity of the story that Yvonne wants to report.

Although inspired by the case of Janet Cooke, Wilson is less interested here in its ethics debate, than in what drives such a bright and capable person to resort to such grand deceptions in the pursuit of accolades:

I think it comes out of fear and desperation. The problem is once you start lying, especially on a large scale, it becomes addictive and second nature, but you have to maintain it. And when you lie about your core being, you cause a lot of damage to yourself. When I was younger, I went through a period where I lied to myself because I wanted to be somebody else.

Indeed, as Hilton Als puts it in The New Yorker, it is "a self-portrait, a profound 'what if' meditation on the part of the author." In doing so, Wilson also exposes the complexity of the truth:

Class, race, politics. It all intersects. I think the media likes to focus only on race, and usually in very simplistic ways. Black versus white. Guilty versus victim. But I think those lines are often blurry and complex. The personal is the political. The political is the personal. And ambition is ambition no matter what class or race you are from.

Wilson imaginatively makes separate conversations -- some of which are internal -- intersect on stage. To me, these felt like the criss-crossing paths that the various aspects of the truth of the story took. Nydia Calón's Yvonne is appropriately desperate and cold, while Michelle Dowd's Pat carries her years of struggle with self-righteous poise. David J. Miller's direction keeps the one-act play brisk and riveting. Miller is also the scenic designer. The audience in the BCA Plaza Black Box watches from the four rectangular corners cut out from a rectangular room. The rest of the room forms the stage, the floor and walls of which are covered with newspapers. This is a perfect backdrop for this story about a news story.

My Space-Time Continuum

Fri, 16 Sep 2005 15:45:12 GMT

I have time, and I have space. They are indistinguishable in my detrital treasure of thoughts and things, languishing in the morass of intended ambition. Over five months into what I made believe was an exercise in time to fashion my own feng shui for the space I've accumulated, I am beginning to discern a cross-suffusion of the temporal and spatial dimensions that define my amorphousness.

It often feels like I've fallen into an abyss that's beyond my depth, but so far the fear of a free-fall has been just that. So, yes, I missed the promised re-evaluation at the end of last month. Well, actually, I didn't. I just didn't report it here, which is a far lesser offence. I continue to be involved in all the same stuff -- DFA Boston, ACLU/CLTF, etc. -- but it's no longer peripheral. I've jumped in with both feet, working on a winning primary campaign, and a campaign in my own district. With the latter candidate, I walked in the Puerto Rican and the Dominican parades, thinking how odd it was for people to wave the flag of a nation-state in celebration of the culture that happened to be prevalent within its borders. But then it was I who was carrying a sign, smiling and waving (particularly at the hombres guapos) in this cultural celebration, solely for the purpose of my political candidate's "visibility." I guess culture and politics are cross-suffused dimensions as well. They must be, because I wouldn't be caught dead in an India Day parade unless I were walking with the likes of MASALA or the Alliance for a Secular Democratic South Asia...but I digress...

And these digressions are only seemingly random. They don't lead to checking off items on the to-do lists that I'm conscious of, which is precisely the constraint of my consciousness that I'm trying to overcome.

Fight Club

Wed, 27 Jul 2005 23:19:06 GMT

(Spoiler alert)

I was intrigued enough about this movie to finally watch it today. Well, through the first two-thirds of it, I kept muttering, What a load of crap! Then it got somewhat thrilling, and almost provocative, with the conscious identity dissociation. Then it ended with redemption and destruction, and I thought, What a mindfuck!

Well, that, or it was in an alien language. Now, I won't judge Palahniuk until I've read him, but the movie isn't going to bump him to anywhere near the top of my reading list. After listening to him talk about his desire to shock, and seeing this movie, it looks like the transgressive effect of his "immoderate satire" is itself the point, rather than any intended cultural commentary.

Anyways, what do I know? He's quite a cult enterprise, and I have no muscled, six-packed dissociated identities wanting to sabotage it...at least not ones that I'm conscious of...yet.

[Chuck Palahniuk | Fight Club | film | movies]

My Cities

Fri, 08 Jul 2005 07:18:12 GMT

On 9/11, it was New York, the city that I've always fantasized living in. Then, a couple of years later, as the Iraq war was unfolding, I visited Madrid and London for the first time. Madrid was like a torrid affair -- amidst passionate chants of "No a la guerra" -- to which I long to return. As soon as I hit the streets of London, I felt that I belonged there, and wondered why I wasn't living there.

I don't feel any different about these cities today, except that I love them more.

Update: William Rivers Pitt put this in perspective for me (via codshit)...

In Iraq they call events like this "Tuesday."

Creative Idleness Milestone: Three Months

Fri, 01 Jul 2005 21:25:55 GMT

At the end of three months of not working for a living, it's time for the re-evaluation that I promised myself. The restlessness of the first two months has subsided, and the process of "cleaning house" has gained some momentum. Besides shredding paper, discarding irrelevant remnants of the past, and flattening (for recycling) the boxes that stored them, I dusted off some of the relevant, but neglected, intentions in my life's attic, and am trying them out around the house, looking for the best spot for them.

So, besides "new experiences," which I'm not inclined to parade in public, I'm involved actively with the CLTF and, peripherally (so far) with DfMA & DFA Boston. Picking up Spanish (and other languages) hasn't happened yet, much to my disappointment. I am, however, making headway in sorting out the physical chaos that I inhabit. The progress has been slow, yet enlightening. Being at peace with not "working" has been more of a challenge than I had anticipated. The joy of flow in either creative engagement or disengagement requires unlearning the internalized imperatives of our productivity-centric world, as much as deciphering the beats of our organic rhythms in the cacophony of our over-informed lives. In attempting this, I've managed not to fall into the abyss of navel-gazing - though I've sometimes teetered on the brink - because, well, I'm a social animal, and I need to play with an orchestra, or two, or three...

Evidently, my physical chaos is a manifestation of my mental disarray, so, given the progress I've made, I'd say this experiment is worth continuing. The next evaluation will be in two months. Meanwhile, I hope to be more frequently expressive here, in my virtual corner of the real world.

[idleness | flow]

Evil Intentions

Tue, 28 Jun 2005 04:55:47 GMT

Aaron Swartz recently wrote about the "intentionality of evil." This is something I find myself thinking about a lot. Here's the thoughtstream that Aaron's remarks triggered:

My (not so well-read) opinion is that the stark good/evil contrast in comic books, H/Bollywood movies, etc. comes from thoughtless readings of the embodiments of Good & Evil in our scriptures. To my non-fundamentalist eyes, these are devices to help us distinguish the good from the evil, which are inextricably linked within and around us. Furthermore, most religions that concern themselves with this dichotomy also advise against judging an individual Good or Evil, leaving that to some human-transcending entity, for instance. There's a good reason for that, I think: all that constitutes our existence is anything but absolutely discernible as one or the other of these moral poles. Yet, distinguish between these we must, often in absolute terms, in order to live up to our morality, however we may define it.

Aaron's "intentionality" remarks reminded me of the movie Seven, about a serial killer who kills those whom he considers indulging in one of the Biblical "seven deadly sins." He of couse believes not just that his intent is good, but that his actions are Good. So conscientious is he that when he finds himself guilty of one of those sins, jealousy (or is it lust?), he surrenders to the authorities, asking for the same punishment that he meted out to his victims. There is a moral consistency here that is rarely found among us normal folks, most of whom agonise over the minor and major moral inconsistencies of our thoughts and actions, never ever managing to eliminate them. I, for instance, buy sweet and juicy strawberries from California, quite aware that most of the migrant workers who picked them are paid sub-human wages and have no access to any of the basic benefits that Americans enjoy. Still, I want to see my aging mother enjoy the strawberries, and these are the only ones I can afford on my limited budget. Who's the evil one, the conscientious killer of Seven or I, the wishy-washy liberal?

So, re. "Everybody thinks they are good," I don't think that's true. Most people know they cut moral corners and rationalize to varying degrees. People's moral compasses are also not calibrated to comply to a single standard. People make conscious choices to act in morally deficient ways, sometimes even talk themselves into doing so, as they negotiate through their respective obstacles toward desirable outcomes for themselves and those they care about. What separates them from the comic book villians is not that they always intend to do good, but that they intend to do good but are not above the opposite intention either.

[evil | Aaron Swartz]

Perfect Discomfort

Mon, 06 Jun 2005 08:29:55 GMT

Over two months now since I embarked upon my venture of being a bum. The very few heady surges of intellectual adrenaline since then, each leaving me drained and disoriented, have produced only teasers of a desired outcome - more about these desires another time. Between these surges, the long, distressing periods of alternating stupor and deflected stimulation have recreated in my mind the entropy of what by all accounts is my home.

In a charmingly optimistic attempt to keep track of my vaporising time, I began reporting my doings and meanderings in twice-daily updates to a couple of friends. With the power to order still elusive, "stuff" maintained free reign over my apartment. Last Friday, at update time, in my cosy corner of the couch, suddenly, I could no longer distract myself from the chaos with the slick dissonance of my web-browsing habits. This was my update:

Woke up at 11:30.
Felt lousy.
Blew nose, cleared throat.
Felt lousy.
Took off couch futon cover to wash; turned futon over; put throw over it.
Felt lousy.
Coffee, cereal, email, surfing, etc.
Felt lousy.
Wrote mid-day update.
Felt lousy.

One of the recipients responded thus:

I don't mean to boast but I can feel lousy even without putting in the effort to do all that other work.

Woke up at 11:30.
Blew nose, cleared throat.
Took off couch futon cover to wash; turned futon over; put throw over it.
Coffee, cereal, email, surfing, etc.
Wrote mid-day update.

Maybe you should be comfortable with who you are: someone who feels lousy. That's the only way to be happy. But make sure you don't get too comfortable, then you'll be too happy, and it wouldn't be you anymore. Besides, nobody would hang out with you.

Hmmm...I think I have achieved this fine balance. I feel lousy, and accept it, but am comfortable with it just up to the point that it would begin to feel good. Thus, I maintain the "creative tension" between feeling lousy and good. Having achieved this delicate steady-state, it would seem that I have nothing to complain about, everything is perfect, but now the challenge is not to get comfortable with this perfection - lest I cease to "be me" and am shunned by the cool people I know.

Am I up to this challenge? Do I have what it takes? Am I good enough? Am I smart enough? And, doggone it, do people like me?

Abundant Pride

Fri, 27 May 2005 17:49:06 GMT

The recent graduations at my alma mater were the first that I attended there - two on the same day, as a proud uncle. I stayed away from all of my own three graduations, from as many schools, because they would've been "pointless rituals." This of course didn't apply this time, because I was there to cheer, and yell their names when they walked, then hug and congratulate them, and pose for countless pictures with the bestest niece and nephew and family in the world!

Another moment of (very rare) alma mater and ethnic pride came earlier this month when a desi heroically heckled Ann Coulter there.

That's more pride than I can handle in a month, and there's gonna be more coming next month. Since I already have a healthy store, I'll be sharing it with like-minded visitors here.

[pride]

Reaching

Wed, 11 May 2005 02:42:34 GMT

Arms to hands to fingertips
Keep time at a distance
Eyes empty their gaze of heart
Hope envelopes all else

Nights don't fall so easily
After dust entangled days
Breezes die in echoes and breaths
Light flees with the twilight

Wishes stand in rain unwashed
Letting their stains bleed
Fleeting thoughts escape their words
Unwritten books tell all

A Tale of Two Sisters (Janghwa, Hongryeon)

Thu, 05 May 2005 02:40:28 GMT

Saw this, a psycho-thriller by Korean filmmaker Ji-woon Kim, at the HFA a couple of days ago. I like to go into movies cold, so it wasn't immediately that I figured out that it was a thriller that I was watching. It began in a stark, white room where a doctor is preparing to talk to one of the Sisters. A nurse leads her to a table, seating her across it from the doctor. The doctor speaks empathetically, trying to engage her in talk therapy. She does not answer. She looks down, with her hair obscuring her face. Then she raises her head towards the window, face still covered by her hair. What follows tell us how Su-mi (Su-jeong Lim) ended up where she is today.

Su-yeon (Guen-yeong Mun) is Su-mi's younger sister, and the more traumatized one after their mother's death. Their father (Kap-su Kim) drives them to a house in the country after Su-mi's prior hospitalisation due to a mental breakdown. There they must live by the rules of their proverbial wicked stepmother (Jung-ah Yum). Su-mi must protect her sister from the stepmother's cruelty.

The tension builds ever so slowly. The house is large and immaculate, yet cosy, quite the opposite of the opening image of the movie. As we first enter the house with the two sisters, we don't notice the ominous aura, but it's not long before it bleeds into the apparent reality. The distinction between what's real and what's not remains ambiguous even after we learn what is really going on.

Ji-woon relies on the movie watcher's imagination in many ways. The visualisation of horror, even when we see the apparitions, stops short of unfolding in front of our eyes. The production and sound design are superb, as is the editing.

Wonder what Dreamworks will do with it when they remake it, they've apparently bought the rights.

[My del.icio.us: A Tale of Two Sisters | film | movies]

We live in post-ironic times.

Sat, 30 Apr 2005 00:05:13 GMT

A future generation is going to have to rediscover irony. Given the extent to which reality imitates satire today, I wouldn't count on our children to be that generation.

The latest example of this that I came across recently, through a friend, is a planned "world's biggest mythological theme park" in India - the mythology is Hindu. While I do give the planners high marks for calling it mythological - Hindus after all respect their myths more than any other major religious ilk - the following rationale for the location from the park's chief executive gave me pause:

People come to take a bath on the bank of the Ganga river because it is a Hindu belief that this cleanses a person. But after they take a bath there is nowhere for the pilgrims to go to learn about Hindu stories.

I would hope that the pilgrims wouldn't need a theme park to learn why they just cleansed themselves in the Ganga.

Then there's the businesswoman in Britain, who wants a million Christians to contribute £144 each toward a biblical theme park aimed at reversing the "decline of Christian teaching and celebration in schools."

Being the leader of the free world and all, there is of course already a Christian theme park in the US - The Holy Land Experience in Orlando, which, I'm told, happens to be the home of another such park, with an arguably not too different goal, except for the brand of the religion. Among the thrills at HLE is the Oasis Palms Café, where one can satiate one's belief with a "Goliath Burger," or "Bedouin Beef" or "Shepherd Soup."

[irony | satire | mythology | religion | theme park]

The Girl from Monday

Tue, 26 Apr 2005 22:46:44 GMT

Hal Hartley's characters float just a couple of inches above reality. This gives even the grittiest of them a childlike innocence that would otherwise be incongruous with the worlds that they inhabit. The most explicit example of this is the amnesiac gangster in Amateur, who, with his past detached from him, is perplexed by the bits of it that he discovers. Jack, whom we follow around the "dictatorship of the consumer" in The Girl from Monday, is similarly innocent.

Bill Sage, a Hartley regular, plays the stylish, brooding Jack, who is the ad whiz architect of the campaign leading to the revolution that put Triple M - Major Multimedia Monopoly - in control of all aspects of society, including the government. Every individual now has a market value, and one purpose: working toward economic primacy. To that end, sex can only be had in order to increase one's buying power, which can be insured against devaluation due to the delinquent behavior of a partner. The Girl (Tatiana Abracos) of the title is a newly arrived extra-terrestrial "immigrant," whom Jack finds and seeks to protect from the authorities. Jack leads an underground resistance that aims to destabilize Triple M's infrastructure through bloodless sabotage. William (Leo Fitzpatrick), a bright teenager, is an operative in the resistance, who seduces Cecile (Sabrina Lloyd), Jack's colleague, into having sex only for pleasure. Cecile's conviction and sentence for this crime lead her to join the resistance.

A hint of Jack's innocence, I persume, is the economy Chevrolet that he drives, which is otherwise inexplicable. Despite having helped create the dystopia, he has not succumbed to its spin, thus preserving his internal innocence. As in all Hartley films, the dialog is uttered as if it were involuntary, and what comes out sounds refreshingly unprocessed. His deadpan verbal style grabs you while you laugh at the odd humor. An example:

He took me to a party where people fuck just because it feels good.

I don't know, however, why he chose to burden this movie with so much narration. Apparently he wanted to reach audiences other than the Hal Hartley loyals, so, presumably, he thought that he needed to elucidate more. Whatever the reason, it makes the film less than interesting, as does the obvious "ranting." Then again, he wasn't telling me anything I didn't already know and perhaps I was not one of his target audience for this one.

Unlike his dialog, the movement in his films is visibly choreographed. In an interview about No Such Thing, he said:

I do very precise blocking, just because I like geometry and the physical activity that constitutes the picture.

This was less obvious here, though. Instead, he conveys dissonance by using jump-cuts and opposing angular shots. This works very well. It is also a beautiful piece of digital videography.

I await Hartley's next, which is the sequel to Henry Fool, one of the movies that are close to my heart.

[My del.icio.us: Hal Hartley | film | movies]

Sin City

Fri, 22 Apr 2005 15:55:34 GMT

So...well...like everyone else who's cool and all that, I too saw Sin City, and was, like, in awe of Robert Rodriguez and stuff...

You know that Marv dude, the prostheticized Mickey Rourke? He reminded me of Mike in Olly's Prison...kinda, sorta. A perfectly gentle guy in a corrupt, violent environment. Wonder what old Edward Bond would've thought of him... hmmm...

Olly's Prison

Sat, 16 Apr 2005 21:26:14 GMT

On Tuesday, thanks to Susan Kaup of ExploitBoston and the American Repertory Theater, I was introduced to Edward Bond, a playwright considered by many to be "the greatest British dramatist since the war." I went with Susan, Josh Ain and Rachelle Hassan to see Bond's Olly's Prison at ART's new Zero Arrow Theater. The four of us were to blog our thoughts about it.

I went into the play cold. I had never heard of Edward Bond, but then my familiarity with theater is meager. His work hasn't made it to American stages much, which doesn't surprise me after seeing the play and reading about him. While his plays are appreciated in France, Germany and elsewhere in Europe, most Britons apparently find them inaccessible. Still, he and his plays were among those that got the most votes in a 1998 survey, conducted by the Royal National Theatre in London, that asked playwrights, actors, directors, journalists and other theater professionals to nominate ten English language, twentieth century plays that they considered "significant." This disconnect was evident in the March 2005 critics' discussion (four parts, Flash audio) of Bond's work. One opinion was that Bond requires a degree of creativity from the audience that today's adults, who are accustomed to the low imaginative threshold of box-office driven productions (I'm paraphrasing), don't bring to the theater. When asked why other creatively challenging playwrights are better received, the answer was somewhat unconvincing - that Bond is ahead of his time (again, paraphrasing) and that he himself is still figuring out how the dramatic structure should change in order to better engage today's audiences.

As you enter the theater of Olly's Prison, you're visually jolted by the brightness of the rectangular, white-walled space, bleakly lit with parallel, vertical fluorescent tubes all along the side walls forming the length of the room. You adjust to the glare and find your way to your seat, and, at some point along the way, you notice that nothing separates you from the stage, which is wide open, with just enough props to suggest that it's a living and dining room that no one attempted to decorate. At one end of the dining table is a young woman, seated motionless. You can't help but wonder about the woman. It wasn't until I thought about the play as I read about Bond that I realized that that's when he first engaged me. Kudos to set and costume designer David Zinn, and, of course, director Robert Woodruff.

The young woman is Shiela (Zofia Goszczynska), who we learn has returned home late. Her father, Mike (Bill Camp), makes her a cup of tea. There is no escaping Mike's life now. Camp takes Mike from caring to desperate, from angry to tender, from grieving to surly, from abusive to pleading, and back. Like Mike, all you want is for Shiela to drink the tea that he has made for her, and by so doing offer him the hope that his good intentions can make up for his broken spirit. When his rage actually lands him in prison later, it is just the adjustment of his physical environment to the reality of his life.

In jail, he shares a cell with Barry (Thomas Derrah), whose desire for cigarettes is greater than his humanity. By the end of the first act, Mike's most desperate attempt to escape has not only failed, but sealed his fate. Or so I thought, which is why, I'm almost embarrassed to say, I figured that the play was over - incidentally, I wasn't the only one to think this. I didn't catch Mike's name if it was uttered in the first act, I was convinced that he was Olly, the title character, whose prison the play was about.

The second act begins with the end of Mike's jail sentence, and it's now Vera (Angela Reed) who is desperately reaching out to him. While Vera is more dogged about her desires than Mike, her hopes are pinned on the delusion of happiness in a life with Mike, who has never reciprocated her feelings for him. Reed plays her with a nervous peppiness, and her eventual breakdown is like that of a child whose dollhouse has just been destroyed. This is exactly how I'd expect someone to react to having to face the void that they had tastefully covered up with decor.

Mike is out of jail but still imprisoned, the years behind bars have quelled his rage, however. He is now looking to make sense of the things that have happened to him, and of what he has done. This is what leads him to Ellen (Karen MacDonald), Smiler's mother. Smiler (Peter Dylan Richards), now dead, was in jail with Mike; he was the one who inadvertently foiled Mike's attempt to escape. At Ellen's place, he meets Olly (Mickey Solis).

In a response to the criticism of the brutality in Saved, his best known play, Bond said of a central character in the play:

...the play is about a liberal...and about his attempt to pacify his environment. These attempts fail, and not because of his personal failings. He is finally captured by his environment. I have examined and explained this liberal tragedy...

This sounds a lot like Mike of Olly's Prison, except Mike is not trying to pacify his environment. He is trying to be good, despite his flaws, in an environment that is incompatible with goodness. The aim of the play, says Bond -

...is to show how violence secretes itself - and hides within - the ordinary social...violence comes not from genes but from ideas. Genes merely make possible, ideas decide.

This, I presume, is the destructive violence that follows after Olly enters the scene. It is perpetrated by Frank (David Wilson Barnes), a police officer, who wants Mike to rot in jail. Its aftermath brings out the tenderness in Mike, but they all remain confined in the prison that the title signifies:

(Olly is) a matchstick man, an O for the head, two L's for arms, an inverted Y for legs. It means Everyman. It's everybody's prison. That for me is a pseudo-democracy.

This, I'm afraid, was not compelling to me. Frank comes across as a comic-book evil cop, I couldn't see him representing a system of "ideas" that "secretes violence" into "the ordinary social," if that was the intention. The violence itself appeared contrived, and somewhat comical and indulgent.

Camp and Reed were superb and the rest of the cast was good as well, but the performances seemed encumbered by the accents. Bond did not want any "tinkering" in order to make it accessible to American audiences, which explains why the original cultural ethos had to be maintained.

Woodruff describes Bond's plays as "difficult," which is evident. My critique notwithstanding, his visualization has me looking forward to seeing my second play by Bond.

Edward Bond is a theorist of drama as well. He is passionately socialist -

If a crime is committed in contemporary drama, it's all about court proceedings, Q and A. Actually, if a murder is committed, it is a social question. I have been offended, even if I don't know the victim, my society has been offended. This should be profoundly disturbing. But the criminal-and-detective plot of modern drama asks only "whodunnit?" The crime is supposedly private.

This goes against the American's grain. "Individual responsibility" is the American's sole remedy of choice to his social ills, and retribution the basis of his criminal justice. Getting the American psyche to try out an alternate perspective is a worthy cause. Even if Bond's polemics seem extreme, the American would do well to find the kernel of truth in them:

I think theatre has only one subject: justice. What I have to do is to make people realise that they need justice to be human and that justice is something collective.

[My del.icio.us: Edward Bond | theater | drama]

The Ideal of Idleness

Thu, 14 Apr 2005 07:35:27 GMT

In the second week of my new, idle life, the withdrawals from the work fix have diminished somewhat. The pent up expectation of achievement - now that "I don't have the time" has seemingly ceased to be a valid refrain - made for a restless beginning of my self-chosen, temporary freedom from work - or the "necessary means to a livelihood," in the words of Bertrand Russell. Amusingly enough, my gripe at the end of the first week was that I hadn't been productive enough. Russell would have admonished me for carrying the precepts of wage-slavery, as it were, into my freedom…

Modern technique has made it possible for leisure, within limits, to be not the prerogative of small privileged classes, but a right evenly distributed throughout the community. The morality of work is the morality of slaves, and the modern world has no need of slavery.

Russell uses 'idleness' and 'leisure' interchangeably but, in our overworked times, the distinction between them is judgment-laden and not so subtle. That is precisely why I was deliberate in my choice to call this a period of "creative idleness," inspired by Mark Slouka's "Quitting the Paint Factory" in last November's Harper's Magazine:

Leisure is permissible, we understand, because it costs money; idleness is not, because it doesn't. Leisure is focused; whatever thinking it requires is absorbed by a certain task: sinking that putt, making that cast, watching that flat-screen TV. Idleness is unconstrained, anarchic. Leisure – particularly if it involves some kind of high-priced technology – is as American as a Fourth of July barbecue. Idleness, on the other hand, has a bad attitude. It doesn't shave; it's not a member of the team; it doesn't play well with others. It thinks too much, as my high school coach used to say. So it has to be ostracized. [Or put to good use. The wilderness of association we enter when we read, for example, is one of the world's great domains of imaginative diversity: a seedbed of individualism. What better reason to pave it then, to make it an accessory, like a personal organizer, a sure-fire way of raising your SAT score, or improving your communication skills for that next interview. You say you like to read? Then don't waste your time; put it to work. Order Shakespeare in Charge: The Bard's Guide to Leading and Succeeding on the Business Stage, with its picture of the bard in a business suit on the cover.]

Well, like Russell, Slouka would probably not be impressed with me either. He would have seen through the 'creative' qualifier and recognized my internalized reverence for the work ethic. I was essentially saying that idleness was not inherently a worthy use of my time; by 'creative' what I really meant was 'fruitful' and hence I'd be quite a bit less than idle. Hmmm…

It is (the) willingness to hand over our lives (to "work," defined as a means to wealth, and "success," as a synonym for it) that fascinates and appalls me. There's such a lovely perversity to it; it's so wonderfully counterintuitive, so very Christian: You must empty your pockets, turn them inside out, and spill out your wife and your son, the pets you hardly knew, and the days you simply missed altogether watching the sunlight fade on the bricks across the way. You must hand over the rainy afternoons, the light on the grass, the moments of play and of simply being. You must give it up, all of it, and by your example teach your children to do the same, and then – because even this is not enough – you must train yourself to believe that this outsourcing of your life is both natural and good. But even so, your soul will not be saved.

I'm not sure whether that'd really be fair, though. I concede that declaring the aim of my idleness to be "creative" lends itself to some easy psychoanalysis, but it's not indicative of a belief in salvation through materially gainful "work." Yet, I do believe in work, the kind that I do when I'm "idle." The kind in which I lose myself, regardless of the outcome. The kind that I'm doing at this very moment. In this respect, I contradict neither Russell nor Slouka.

Russell's idea of a four-hour work day would work quite nicely for me, and, given our ability to telecommute, the commuting time wouldn’t need to be deducted from that in order to make it worthwhile…

When I suggest that working hours should be reduced to four, I am not meaning to imply that all the remaining time should necessarily be spent in pure frivolity. I mean that four hours' work a day should entitle a man to the necessities and elementary comforts of life, and that the rest of his time should be his to use as he might see fit. It is an essential part of any such social system that education should be carried further than it usually is at present, and should aim, in part, at providing tastes which would enable a man to use leisure intelligently. I am not thinking mainly of the sort of things that would be considered 'highbrow'. Peasant dances have died out except in remote rural areas, but the impulses which caused them to be cultivated must still exist in human nature. The pleasures of urban populations have become mainly passive: seeing cinemas, watching football matches, listening to the radio, and so on. This results from the fact that their active energies are fully taken up with work; if they had more leisure, they would again enjoy pleasures in which they took an active part.

However, the possibility that Russell seems to fail to consider is that of work that is in harmony with some aspect of an individual’s essence. This would indeed be nice work if you can get it, and a lucky few actually do get it – regardless of the height of their "brows." Methinks that Russell was one of these fortunate ones, as is Slouka. If I submit that I am only aspiring to find this good fortune for myself, I suspect that neither would disapprove. As Orlando May concluded, Russell's own prolificacy doesn't really contradict his championing of leisure -

The reference to industriousness here, and the somewhat interchangeable usage of 'idleness' and 'leisure' in this book, give a clue to Russell's attitudes towards his own prodigious output... What Russell argues for is the celebration and pursuit of free time, where one is able to do precisely as one pleases - within the usual minimum liberal norms, whether it is intensive intellectual labour, starting a magazine, or dozing in the sun with a glass of red wine.

The important point here is to recognize that dozing in the sun with a glass of wine is as worthy a use of one’s idle time as is any industrious pursuit, provided the sanctity of the idleness is maintained. This, I believe, is also what Slouka wants us to see -

At times you can almost see it, this flypaper we're attached to, this mechanism we labor in, this delusion we inhabit. A thing of such magnitude can be hard to make out, of course, but you can rough out its shape and mark its progress, like Lon Chaney's Invisible Man, by its effects: by the things it renders quaint or obsolete, by the trail of discarded notions it leaves behind. What we're leaving behind today, at record pace, is whatever belief we might once have had in the value of unstructured time: in the privilege of contemplating our lives before they are gone, in the importance of uninterrupted conversation, in the beauty of play. In the thing in itself – unmediated, leading nowhere. In the present moment.

Unstructured time is what I’ve permitted myself to have. W.H. Davies’ "Leisure," which I learned as a kid, has suddenly resurfaced in my memory -

What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare?

[My del.icio.us: idleness | leisure]

Middling Rage

Sat, 09 Apr 2005 11:56:50 GMT

Dick Jones revels in the glories of rage in his "late middle age." Although I am behind him by about a score, I believe I do know what he means, but I am still cursed with painful longings for an imaginary youth.

Just the other day, when I entered the gym after a three-year hiatus, my reflection in the ubiquitous mirrors wasn't exactly the prettiest twenty-something there. That was extremely disconcerting, and being about a score older than the twenty-somethings was no consolation.

As for rage, those of us who are constitutionally middle-aged, regardless of our generational affiliation, mistook it for youthful rebellion when they told us we were young. Having been there without really being there, we're only marginally wiser, and are now given to thoughtless envy of all "dudes" young and bright and beautiful and accomplished and well-adjusted.

So nice to know about the joys of rage awaiting me down the road!

Creative Idleness

Fri, 08 Apr 2005 21:38:10 GMT

He used to say, "If I didn't have a job to go to everyday, I'd have no trouble finding things to do with my time." Then, one day, he quit his job and set out to prove that. One week later he knew he had done that when he saw an email from a friend telling him about a seminar that could have had him drooling intellectually; he had already missed a previous such event, to which the same friend had alerted him. His reply marked the end of the honeymoon period of his "new life," as his friends called it:

i'd be very interested in this, but, seeing that this started 10 minutes ago and this fat bastard woke up only about half an hour ago, i'm gonna miss this one too, as i'm gonna miss todd solondz at the hfa this evening, as i'm gonna miss all of the ships that come in till ships become obsolete...

meanwhile, my bathrobe can't hold my blubber, and the entropy in my life - both physical and metaphysical - has me in constant Brownian motion in the fluid of my existence, such as it is...

thusly i waste last night's (early this morning's) profound conversation with The K on the recursiveness of happiness ("be happy by being happy")...hold on! i believe i've got it, i'm happy right now. must blog about this...after the gym, after the kitchen is clean, after i get on my ship...wheeeeee! i'm in pedesis again!

Why Java is this geek's God

Tue, 06 Jul 2004 05:49:24 GMT

I was at JavaOne 2004 last week, with 14,000 other geeks, prostating my faculties to the glorious riches of Java technologies and basking in the abundance of the mysterious acronyms showering upon us at the inspirational technical sessions that Archangel Sun had arranged for our enlightenment. It was the kind of Heaven that is worthy of my inner geek when he logs out for good.

I am ashamed to admit that my faith was less than strong as I waited for the inaugural keynote sermon. It was not until Sun COO Jonathan Schwartz revealed the Java gospel that I began to see the light. Java is ubiquitous, he proclaimed. I first thought it strange that ubiquity made me want to look for Windows and I wondered why the gigantic hall had none. I know now that it was Lucifer sending my mind on evil tangents. Then came the revelation that saved my faith: Teenagers in Madagascar were paying as little as three dollars apiece for Java-based ringtones on their cellphones.

Madagascar! Yes, the same one where 75% of the population lives on less than a dollar a day and 16% of the children in areas devastated by recent cyclones are malnourished.

The miracle of Java has delivered these people from their suffering and elevated their existence to one that can benefit from its technological promise! I BELIEVE!

--aslam

Ring Route

Thu, 24 Jun 2004 06:18:08 GMT

Waiting at the stop
Fancies fleet
Like buses adorned with ads
None catchy enough to catch

The coffee cup cautions
Hot Beverage
Sipping May Not Ignite
Ignore as is customary

Take the next one
Familiar passengers
Alien destinations
Ride while the coffee is hot

Back at the café
No empty tables
Get another cup of fancies
To go

--aslam

The Next Step

Tue, 22 Jun 2004 04:33:58 GMT

That's the name of the project that was one of the things that kept me from blogging all this time. A 26-minute movie, shot on digital video, made by a bunch of us as a way of learning the craft of filmmaking. It's my first directorial attempt, something I dreamt of doing for far too long.

When the producer, an ex-classmate from the "Film Fusion Workshops" that I attended several years ago at the now defunct Boston Film & Video Foundation, handed me the story and asked if I wanted to direct it, I was trembling inside. It is terrifying to be offered the chance to do something that your bones have gone numb aching for. You know the ache will now avenge its neglect. The protective sheath of questions about your compulsion to do what you hoped to god was your calling is now useless.

That was an eternity ago. On this side of that eternity, over two years later, there is neither ache nor numbness. The questions are still there but have turned soft and unsure of what they might be protecting. The compulsion remains as elusive as ever and my calling a mystery as vexing as an agnostic's heart.

Potential demonstrated? Check. Lessons learned? Check. Satisfaction created? Check. The next step identified? Er...

The short was made under the aegis of the Arlington Studio in Arlington, Massachusetts (USA) primarily for airing on public/community access TV. I'd of course like it aired in as many places as possible so if you'd like to sponsor it on your community access channel then please contact me for details.

--aslam