So this is going to be the final piece of my Laramie Triptych. It's been long gestating, probably too long, and this is almost an emergency C-section to just, Get it out! An old joke, but appropriate. A beginning and an end, the ouroboros. Sorry about the unexpected, unnatural blooming of my style tonight, but I just read the poem from Nabokov's Pale Fire. I don't pretend to approach the old boy on any level of talent or intellect or raw sex appeal, but he is infectious.
As an another of my innumerable asides, read Pale Fire. It's incredible. At least, from the first quarter, I assume that it will be, and the first quarter is the poem that is central to the work, the rest is just commentary. Can you imagine that? Writing a book that is primarily commentary on itself? Of course, the commentary is often unrelated, as I understand, and weaves a narrative that only builds fantastically off of the poem, but that is still amazing. It's as though the first act of Hamlet was all there was, and 'To be or not to Be' was just commentary. If the Bible was like that, no one would have heard of the Messiah outside the absurd ramblings of some academicians who pulled the wild tale of an eternal savior out of the good old story of the House of Israel up until the first Babylonian Captivity. The only Babylonian Captivity, excuse me, the second one merely a theory attempting to relate the true history of the old Semites to the sorry case of modern society.
I am rambling. I will come back later, when I am less full of words and muse at you about how strange it must be to have been in the first production of the Laramie Project. To have to stand on stage and taking the character a person you have met, spoken to, befriended, saying words that you heard them say, that might be nestled in a tape recorder in your filing cabinet back home. And then, as though that were not enough to untangle your neurons, you have to turn around and act yourself. It's weird.
Well, coming back to this the next day, I feel as though that little summary said everything I wanted to say. But I will say some more. Did you think I wouldn't.
The premise of the Laramie project is that all of the characters are based on real people, and everything they said is real, and edited as faithfully as possible. I say they are based on real people, because in the end, they are no more real than any other dramatic character. A role in a play is nothing more than the words that comprise it. They may suggest a past and a future, hint at relationships and lives that we never see on stage, but they are fundamentally just a small series of words, and they can't encompass the fantastically complicated totality that is a human being. This makes acting Laramie somewhat easier for companies who don't know the people involved; as long as they are being faithful to the script, they are being as faithful as possible to the people of Laramie.
If you had met the people of Laramie, it would be different. In their first performance, the Tectonics must have faced the dilemma of fidelity. I wonder if they decided to attempt to mimic the people as accurately as possible, or if they prepared their characters as though they had never eaten dinner with them. My guess is that they tried to divorce their performance as much as possible from their experience, or there would be notes in the script - Doc O'Connor tends to breath heavily through his nose, Reggie Fluty has this obnoxious laugh - to help future performances achieve the same thing. That they don't do that implies a different goal for the play, a goal that somewhat contradicts the idea of "telling it true". The only thing the characters of the Laramie Project share with their inspirations are their words, and in that sense they are a bit like Pierre Menard's Don Quixote. The emphasis is therefore placed on those words, and not on the people themselves.
In this way, the Laramie Project asserts the primacy of theater over direct retelling as a way of explaining the world. Despite being about real people, it is a construct, a story. (Sorry I am inarticulate; it's half past twelve, the only time I can drive myself to write) All of the talk of telling it true and accurately representing the town is a bunch of baloney. You are not seeing Wyoming, you are seeing a college theater group's interpretation of Wyoming. Yet somehow, you forget that. You believe that Aaron Kriefels and Jedediah Schultz really are the same person, and that Wyomingites have no accent. And it's still all true. Despite the rampant falsehoods, you are struck, moved. If they had all tried to pull bad accents, or exactly imitated Rulon Stacy's stutter, you would not. I think it's because the words are powerful, and you can't help but react to them. When the actors bring their own lives and feelings to the characters, the words become realer and more human than if they were acting "accurately" for each character. How's that for a paradox?
This next point was supposed to be the one that was mind-boggling, but as I stumbled into that discussion, I realized how crazy it was, and the obvious difficulties of this one sort of fade away. I was wondering how one acts oneself on stage. I am sure there is a character-building process, a way of presenting yourself that is different from simply choosing not to act for the scenes you are in. After all, Greg Pierroti is a character as much as the Dennis Shepherd, and if he went up on stage and simply acted like he was himself hanging out, the dramatic coherency of the play would be ruined. He surely had to learn to portray himself as he appeared when he was giving interviews, but that is simple, I would think. But still, I can't fathom the eeriness of being in the crowd on the first night and seeing your close friends introduced by a narrator as themselves, as though they were playing themselves. I wouldn't be surprised if they had an entirely different experience of the show, one that was more personal, but at the same time much more focused on the form and ironies of the play, rather than its surface message.
Tune in next time, when I stop talking about the Laramie Project, and talk about philosopher! Also, I should be brief, but who knows.
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
Sunday, December 27, 2009
Some of the time it bothers me, but most of the time it don't (Rough)
It is long past time for Part 2 of my series on the Laramie Project. It's been over a month and a half, but I've been far too lazy to do anything with anything, so I have done nothing. I hope to change that, but I am sure I won't.
As you might know if you have read my first, excessively long post about the show, in this installment I plan to talk about the use of humor in the Laramie Project. As you might expect, there is nothing unfunny about hate crime, and the Tectonics seemed to know this when they wrote their play. It is full of funny lines and monologues, and some characters seem almost entirely comedic. They are not always played up, but a good actor can find any number of potential jokes scattered throughout the play. The Theater Guild's production made what seemed to me the strong choice to seize these moments of comic relief to the fullest. Audiences were consistently taken by surprise when what they assumed would be a depressing but enriching experience made them laugh their asses off. It would be impossible to make the Laramie Project a comedy without earning a "Go to Hell, Go Directly to Hell" card, but tackling the humor inherent in the script helps to emphasize the main message of the play, which is not wholly one of sad remembrance, but of renewal.
A significant reason for the success of the humor in Laramie is that it is entirely unforced. None of the characters are so crass as to crack wise while being interviewed about a brutal murder. There is no wit; the comedy is based on the misspeech and foolishness of people. I am sure it must be hard to speak well when you know that anything you say could be put up on a stage in a blue state, twisted out of context, and branded as the words of a homophobic, conservative, hill-billy asshole. Characters are constantly trying to explain themselves, justify themselves, correct their every lapsus lingua, and it's funny. Sheri Anneson has this problem when she is pressed to explain that SoL is "Shit Out of Luck". Sure it's a funny phrase, but the real humor is in her charming unwillingness to have her uncultured figure of speech on the record. The comedy all seems to stem from this sort of unplanned sincerity, whether a character is defending their rough edges or not realizing that they exist (a la Matt Galloway's "Funneling" monologue towards the end). It makes you realize that the characters are real people who have trouble speaking on their feet, not Shakespearean constructs who can quibble on three definitions of a word exquisitely every third line.
Besides this added realism and relatability, the humor has a very real dramatic importance. Comic relief is a phrase that gets thrown around a lot to describe humor in serious works, but it's vague, and often inaccurate. Typically, it is used to imply that comedy relieves the emotional tension of tragedy. Basically, it's the job of the drunken porter to cool you down so you don't try to commit suicide everytime you watch MacBeth. This is often the case, but like every theory ever advanced in the world of the arts, it doesn't explain everything. I have also heard another theory of Comic Relief, taking Relief instead in the sense of Topographic Relief. Comedy enhances tragedy by the emotional contrast. This is another good use of humor, but it still doesn't cover everything. Just off the top of my head, I can see at least two other applications, which I am going to call Comic Tension and Comic Resolution. I'll give an example of each from the Laramie Project, to try to see explain how I see each, then try to wrap up with some sort of a conclusion.
The specifics of the play are understandably being swept from the corridors of my memory by the the custodian of Time (Lu-Tze!), so this is going to be difficult and probably inaccurate. The examples of simple Comic Relief (both types) in the play seem fairly uncommon. I can't think of any clear examples. That type of humor tends to stand by itself, unrelated to the surrounding events, except as contrast, like the Gravedigger Scene in Hamlet. (I don't know why my examples are from Shakespeare). The comedy in Laramie is almost never like this; it is always tailored to directly heighten emotional tension, especially in the beginning or middle, or resolve it, at the end.
A good example of the first sort is Doc O'Connor's monologue in the beginning of the beat entitled "Matthew". He talks about when he first met Matt Shepherd, and contradicts all of the media's descriptions of him because "this man, this man was 5'2'. Maybe 5'1". Doc is a funny character, mostly because he makes no effort to hide his rustic affability, and this monologue is no exception. It seems like it would be a perfect example of humor that decreases tension, but it doesn't. It's a poignant moment [I just want to digress here to point out my weakness for qualifiers. I am way too scared of strong language; I almost put 'sort of' before poignant, for the eight billionth time in this essay], because eulogies aren't usually humorous. You don't expect anyone to have funny things to say about a tragic figure, and since they are positive, they make you feel more strongly for Matthew and the people who cared about him.
Comic Resolution is when comedy is used not as a respite from the emotional tension of sadness, but as its conclusion, as a way to wrap and signal that everything is alright. Their are two good examples in Laramie: Reggie Fluty and Marge Murray's last conversation,and Matt Galloway's last monologue. They function differently, but both fall under this heading. Reggie and Marge's chat reveals that Reggie is HIV-Negative, and ends with them bickering over Reggie's decision to celebrate her health by kissing every member of the police force. It's a happy scene, but what makes it is the contended quarreling of the ending. It's a sign that everything is alright, all is well. The winter of discontent and sorrow has become glorious spring of laughter.
In Galloway's monologue, he talks about how testifying in the trial was good for him, because he is a natural public speaker and talking to a jury is always a challenge for him. It is probably the funniest bit in the play, especially considering that it is rather incongruous with the rest of the denouement. Unlike the rest of the conclusion, which deals with leaving Laramie and looks to the future, the monologue dwells on the past. In doing so, it reveals that even during the trials, the darkest part of the ordeal, people were finding things to be happy about. The human spirit is fundamentally optimistic, it says, and will always find something to laugh about.
And that is the fundamental message in all of the humor in the Laramie Project. People love to laugh, and it helps them cope with hard times. It may not be the only way of healing the wounds, but an ability to not take yourself too seriously and see the duality of laughter and tears helps communities move on. Or something like that; I haven't read it in too long, so I couldn't really get very textual and it's too late for really deep thinking.
Tune in for the final part of my Laramie Trilogy: Performing metatheatricality.
As you might know if you have read my first, excessively long post about the show, in this installment I plan to talk about the use of humor in the Laramie Project. As you might expect, there is nothing unfunny about hate crime, and the Tectonics seemed to know this when they wrote their play. It is full of funny lines and monologues, and some characters seem almost entirely comedic. They are not always played up, but a good actor can find any number of potential jokes scattered throughout the play. The Theater Guild's production made what seemed to me the strong choice to seize these moments of comic relief to the fullest. Audiences were consistently taken by surprise when what they assumed would be a depressing but enriching experience made them laugh their asses off. It would be impossible to make the Laramie Project a comedy without earning a "Go to Hell, Go Directly to Hell" card, but tackling the humor inherent in the script helps to emphasize the main message of the play, which is not wholly one of sad remembrance, but of renewal.
A significant reason for the success of the humor in Laramie is that it is entirely unforced. None of the characters are so crass as to crack wise while being interviewed about a brutal murder. There is no wit; the comedy is based on the misspeech and foolishness of people. I am sure it must be hard to speak well when you know that anything you say could be put up on a stage in a blue state, twisted out of context, and branded as the words of a homophobic, conservative, hill-billy asshole. Characters are constantly trying to explain themselves, justify themselves, correct their every lapsus lingua, and it's funny. Sheri Anneson has this problem when she is pressed to explain that SoL is "Shit Out of Luck". Sure it's a funny phrase, but the real humor is in her charming unwillingness to have her uncultured figure of speech on the record. The comedy all seems to stem from this sort of unplanned sincerity, whether a character is defending their rough edges or not realizing that they exist (a la Matt Galloway's "Funneling" monologue towards the end). It makes you realize that the characters are real people who have trouble speaking on their feet, not Shakespearean constructs who can quibble on three definitions of a word exquisitely every third line.
Besides this added realism and relatability, the humor has a very real dramatic importance. Comic relief is a phrase that gets thrown around a lot to describe humor in serious works, but it's vague, and often inaccurate. Typically, it is used to imply that comedy relieves the emotional tension of tragedy. Basically, it's the job of the drunken porter to cool you down so you don't try to commit suicide everytime you watch MacBeth. This is often the case, but like every theory ever advanced in the world of the arts, it doesn't explain everything. I have also heard another theory of Comic Relief, taking Relief instead in the sense of Topographic Relief. Comedy enhances tragedy by the emotional contrast. This is another good use of humor, but it still doesn't cover everything. Just off the top of my head, I can see at least two other applications, which I am going to call Comic Tension and Comic Resolution. I'll give an example of each from the Laramie Project, to try to see explain how I see each, then try to wrap up with some sort of a conclusion.
The specifics of the play are understandably being swept from the corridors of my memory by the the custodian of Time (Lu-Tze!), so this is going to be difficult and probably inaccurate. The examples of simple Comic Relief (both types) in the play seem fairly uncommon. I can't think of any clear examples. That type of humor tends to stand by itself, unrelated to the surrounding events, except as contrast, like the Gravedigger Scene in Hamlet. (I don't know why my examples are from Shakespeare). The comedy in Laramie is almost never like this; it is always tailored to directly heighten emotional tension, especially in the beginning or middle, or resolve it, at the end.
A good example of the first sort is Doc O'Connor's monologue in the beginning of the beat entitled "Matthew". He talks about when he first met Matt Shepherd, and contradicts all of the media's descriptions of him because "this man, this man was 5'2'. Maybe 5'1". Doc is a funny character, mostly because he makes no effort to hide his rustic affability, and this monologue is no exception. It seems like it would be a perfect example of humor that decreases tension, but it doesn't. It's a poignant moment [I just want to digress here to point out my weakness for qualifiers. I am way too scared of strong language; I almost put 'sort of' before poignant, for the eight billionth time in this essay], because eulogies aren't usually humorous. You don't expect anyone to have funny things to say about a tragic figure, and since they are positive, they make you feel more strongly for Matthew and the people who cared about him.
Comic Resolution is when comedy is used not as a respite from the emotional tension of sadness, but as its conclusion, as a way to wrap and signal that everything is alright. Their are two good examples in Laramie: Reggie Fluty and Marge Murray's last conversation,and Matt Galloway's last monologue. They function differently, but both fall under this heading. Reggie and Marge's chat reveals that Reggie is HIV-Negative, and ends with them bickering over Reggie's decision to celebrate her health by kissing every member of the police force. It's a happy scene, but what makes it is the contended quarreling of the ending. It's a sign that everything is alright, all is well. The winter of discontent and sorrow has become glorious spring of laughter.
In Galloway's monologue, he talks about how testifying in the trial was good for him, because he is a natural public speaker and talking to a jury is always a challenge for him. It is probably the funniest bit in the play, especially considering that it is rather incongruous with the rest of the denouement. Unlike the rest of the conclusion, which deals with leaving Laramie and looks to the future, the monologue dwells on the past. In doing so, it reveals that even during the trials, the darkest part of the ordeal, people were finding things to be happy about. The human spirit is fundamentally optimistic, it says, and will always find something to laugh about.
And that is the fundamental message in all of the humor in the Laramie Project. People love to laugh, and it helps them cope with hard times. It may not be the only way of healing the wounds, but an ability to not take yourself too seriously and see the duality of laughter and tears helps communities move on. Or something like that; I haven't read it in too long, so I couldn't really get very textual and it's too late for really deep thinking.
Tune in for the final part of my Laramie Trilogy: Performing metatheatricality.
Sunday, December 20, 2009
Anuphraxas Bound (Rough)
I can see it in the distance,
a solitary plume rising from the ground
like smoke from a dragon's nostril.
No, wait; no good dragon has only one nostril,
and as I look I see the second
hidden among the grass, just up hill.
No wait, those aren't nostrils, they're too small.
This must be one giant beast, with nostrils more like
caverns than pizzas.
But there are great funnels over them,
collecting the smoke and channeling it
out of the ground so it doesn't fill the tunnels he is chained
in, and kill him.
The gnomes must have made it,
hundreds
and thousands
of years ago, when they found him
and caught him
and bound him in the earth.
The battle raged for days,
killing dozens of gnomes,
but unfortunately, there were always more.
They buried him under their never-ending numbers,
and then under the Earth.
If I were them, I would use his warmth for heat,
and fry eggs on his mammoth sides.
I'm sure they do.
What else is a chained dragon good for?
I suppose he must shed, now and again,
and when their kings meet the goblin chiefs,
they go arrayed in the finest dragon scale plate,
and give terse commands to tall gnomes
(It's not an oxymoron)
with swords and knives of toenail clippings.
The goblins are fierce,
warriors all, but stupid and superstitious.
Their petty steel is no match for dragon dandruff
and they concede the tunnel network
as far east as the river Lethe.
I guess the dragon is a savior,
a chained beast like Atlas
holding up civilization,
but no Odysseus seems likely to come along
and take his burden,
the burden of supporting an entire subterranean world.
But even if he did, Odysseus would certainly trick him when he returned with the golden apples and give the world back and then Atlas would get all mad and try to get back at him but be totally unable, because what can you do when you are holding the world?
I know, the allusion is shaky,
and the analogy unsound.
But still,
it's fine, you get it.
Like Atlas, the chained beast holds up civilization
as they know it, and submits to all of their humiliations.
But the worst thing,
the worst of all,
what he hates,
and really loathes,
are not the chains
or the eggs
or the incessant scale harvesters.
What he really minds
and wishes he could get rid of,
are those damned nose funnels,
because now he can never reach to scratch his itches.
Someday,
he tells himself.
Someday, I am going to sneeze
and they will blow off into space,
and I'll be able to breath at last.
You and I will know that day when it comes.
(I is me not him here)
As we walk down the hill,
we will notice the free flow of steam,
and the conspicuous lack of manhole covers.
You'll say something like,
“Hmm, it must be caused by a unusually strong build-up of steam. I've heard that often occurs during peak heating times like the mid-winter cold flash we are experiencing now. Don't you agree?”
I'll shrug.
“I think it's dragons.”
Of course, knowing myself all too well,
I could be you, and you could be me,
but who cares.
The exchange will occur,
and I (you) will be wrong,
and you (me) will be right,
but really, it doesn't matter.
As long as one day,
walking down the hill,
there are no manhole covers ,
it can be excess steam,
dragons,
alien abduction,
manhole cover thieves,
a savage prank,
a new campus aesthetic,
spontaneous combustion,
the Bermuda Triangle,
Lee Harvey Oswald,
Jack Ruby,
Stairway to Heaven played backwards,
or even just a dream,
as long as you said one thing,
and I said another,
and we talked.
What's it matter if it's an invisible force,
or warped space time,
or gravitrons?
Newton got a snack either way.
((This is the poem that 0330 is referring to, if you have read the previous post and care to know))
a solitary plume rising from the ground
like smoke from a dragon's nostril.
No, wait; no good dragon has only one nostril,
and as I look I see the second
hidden among the grass, just up hill.
No wait, those aren't nostrils, they're too small.
This must be one giant beast, with nostrils more like
caverns than pizzas.
But there are great funnels over them,
collecting the smoke and channeling it
out of the ground so it doesn't fill the tunnels he is chained
in, and kill him.
The gnomes must have made it,
hundreds
and thousands
of years ago, when they found him
and caught him
and bound him in the earth.
The battle raged for days,
killing dozens of gnomes,
but unfortunately, there were always more.
They buried him under their never-ending numbers,
and then under the Earth.
If I were them, I would use his warmth for heat,
and fry eggs on his mammoth sides.
I'm sure they do.
What else is a chained dragon good for?
I suppose he must shed, now and again,
and when their kings meet the goblin chiefs,
they go arrayed in the finest dragon scale plate,
and give terse commands to tall gnomes
(It's not an oxymoron)
with swords and knives of toenail clippings.
The goblins are fierce,
warriors all, but stupid and superstitious.
Their petty steel is no match for dragon dandruff
and they concede the tunnel network
as far east as the river Lethe.
I guess the dragon is a savior,
a chained beast like Atlas
holding up civilization,
but no Odysseus seems likely to come along
and take his burden,
the burden of supporting an entire subterranean world.
But even if he did, Odysseus would certainly trick him when he returned with the golden apples and give the world back and then Atlas would get all mad and try to get back at him but be totally unable, because what can you do when you are holding the world?
I know, the allusion is shaky,
and the analogy unsound.
But still,
it's fine, you get it.
Like Atlas, the chained beast holds up civilization
as they know it, and submits to all of their humiliations.
But the worst thing,
the worst of all,
what he hates,
and really loathes,
are not the chains
or the eggs
or the incessant scale harvesters.
What he really minds
and wishes he could get rid of,
are those damned nose funnels,
because now he can never reach to scratch his itches.
Someday,
he tells himself.
Someday, I am going to sneeze
and they will blow off into space,
and I'll be able to breath at last.
You and I will know that day when it comes.
(I is me not him here)
As we walk down the hill,
we will notice the free flow of steam,
and the conspicuous lack of manhole covers.
You'll say something like,
“Hmm, it must be caused by a unusually strong build-up of steam. I've heard that often occurs during peak heating times like the mid-winter cold flash we are experiencing now. Don't you agree?”
I'll shrug.
“I think it's dragons.”
Of course, knowing myself all too well,
I could be you, and you could be me,
but who cares.
The exchange will occur,
and I (you) will be wrong,
and you (me) will be right,
but really, it doesn't matter.
As long as one day,
walking down the hill,
there are no manhole covers ,
it can be excess steam,
dragons,
alien abduction,
manhole cover thieves,
a savage prank,
a new campus aesthetic,
spontaneous combustion,
the Bermuda Triangle,
Lee Harvey Oswald,
Jack Ruby,
Stairway to Heaven played backwards,
or even just a dream,
as long as you said one thing,
and I said another,
and we talked.
What's it matter if it's an invisible force,
or warped space time,
or gravitrons?
Newton got a snack either way.
((This is the poem that 0330 is referring to, if you have read the previous post and care to know))
The Ruminations of an Intellectual Decadent (Rough)
I think everyone has a little place in their head where they spend some of their time. How much time varies for everyone, and so does what they do there. Most people use their places when they need to get away from the world and have some time to themselves. Some peoples' probably look just like their houses, and others are probably secluded thickets in the depths of the Black Forest. I have a friend who probably has an entire adult video store in his head. Mine is a quiet English study, furnished with mahogany book shelves, rosewood paneling, and a crackling fire. I generally just sit in there when I have nothing else to do, reading Tolstoy in a silk smoking jacket with a cup of hot chocolate. I think sometimes I spend too much time in there, but I'm not entirely sure that's a bad thing. It can make things a little awkward sometimes, though.
The other day, for instance, on the way to breakfast, I bumped into this guy Dan who lives on my floor. As we walked down the hill, we kept up a friendly conversation about Columbus Day weekend plans, how school was going, etc. When we got to the dining hall, we got our food, found a table, and had what I thought was a pleasant breakfast. It was only when I was done eating and about to go to class that I realized that neither of us had said anything the whole time. I had had a good time for twenty minutes because the whole time I was wandering around in my head. The worst thing was that I couldn't remember anything I had been thinking about, no brilliant flash of philosophical insight to redeem the awkwardness. All I could remember was that I had heard the name “Nick” and thought about “Nick and Nora's Infinite Playlist” for some time, even though I have not seen that movie, do not plan to, and know next to nothing about it. I had spent a whole meal somewhere I have no recollection of, thinking about something unimportant. What a waste.
That is how most of time I spend in my head goes; I sit down in there for a minute and get up an hour later with nothing but a vague curiosity about bee-dancing that I will never bother to fulfill. I have a lot of half-baked philosophical ideas that come to me from time to time, some more consistently than others, and I just thought that it might be interesting to put some of them down on paper, to see if anyone gives a damn. Of course, I know you don't, and that I am just doing this for myself, but with luck I will realize just how silly my incomplete notions are and bother to complete some of them.
There was a young pianist named Liszt
Who only could play well when pissed
When they called for an encore
He tossed back a few more
Then played Für Elise with one fist
I think I spend too much time on Facebook. Every time I sit down at my computer to do anything, I check it at least twice, and usually more often. I feel like an obsessive-compulsive who has to constantly be certain his oven is off, even while cooking dinner. The worst part is that I don't care about it at all. I don't find it particularly useful to know just how Liam Flynn feels about his wisdom-tooth pulling tomorrow, and an email could tell me when the next theater guild meeting is just as efficiently. More efficiently, actually, because then I would only have to check one site for all of my messages, instead of my email and my Facebook. (True story: I just lost my train of thought for a moment, and was halfway there before I even realized what I was doing.) I don't think it's the revolutionary tool that most people think it is, comparable to the cell phone or DvD player. It is, however, a great time waster, and even though I don't particularly like it, I can't get away from it. It probably means I need to focus better, but I like to think I just have to find a better time-waster. Maybe wikipedia can refer me to a good one.
Q1: What's worse than finding a worm in your apple?
I wish I could be blind for a day. I think then I could really understand what it's like and empathize better, or at all, really. I guess I could walk around with a blindfold on, but that doesn't count, both because blind people don't feel something on their face all day, and because even with a blindfold you see those little bright spots of blood vessels in your eyes. I can't imagine that you could still see those, but I would like to be sure. I also wish that I could be deaf, colorblind, a woman, left-handed, a good singer, and gay, all for a day. (Not at once.) Really, I just want to be everyone else in the world for a day, so I can know what it's like. (Including all of those things at once, I suppose, but that has a day to itself.) Unfortunately, there aren't enough days, and I wouldn't want to give up any time for living my own life.
A1: The Holocaust
One of the things that occupies a ton of my time is the problem of wit. When you come up with a clever pun or a great comeback, where does it come from? You don't think about it, you just say it, yet it always turns out funnier than anything you could actively think of. Is there a part of you that searches all of your conversations to see if they contain lines you can pun on or inside jokes you can reference? Or is it just that your memories are always running around in your head just waiting to hear something they recognize so they can pop out? I suppose it's something like the problem of saying something truly random; from which part of my brain did the phrase “baby buggy bumper cars” come from just before I typed it? I have no idea, and as someone who strives, and often fails, to be witty, I think about this sort of thing quite a bit. Next time you come up with a great line, try to figure out just how you came up with it, and you'll realize how marvelous your subconscious really is.
So high above ground
With no harness but rough bark
Am I flying now?
One of the things that most excites me is when I realize that two words are related. I say realize because I am rarely able to just pick two words and see if they come from similar roots, because for two random words from my head they either obviously do or obviously don't. Sometimes, though, something makes me think of two words that might be similar, and I can puzzle it out. I read the other day about the myth of the changeling, and I thought of the cuckoo, a bird that puts its cheap ornamental clocks in other birds' nests and then charges them exorbitantly for the pleasure. I guess you could say that it “cuckolds” the other bird's love for its old clock. And like that, I saw the link; a cuckoo steals another bird's right to paternity, and a cuckold has his paternity stolen. It's an obvious link, but unless you happen to think of the two denotationally different words together, you would never see it. Etymology is fun!
I remember a week in October
When I just could never stay sober.
To conquer my plight
I shotgunned a Sprite
After six more I fell over.
(Note: That was not autobiographical. I wrote it in class one day when I noticed that everyone was using October in their poems. Peer pressure is fun!)
It may seem weird, but the existence of birds surprises me. Everyone has a species that they think just shouldn't exist – octopi, platypi, scorpii – and I think for me that is the entire bird family. I think it is because a half-formed wing is fairly useless. Eventually it reaches a point where it can be used for gliding, and then flying is natural, but until then you have an mutated arm with an annoyingly encumbering flap of skin under it. I don't know how you get from there to the supreme grace and aerial agility of a flock of sparrows flying away when you walk by, and it fascinates me. I know evolution occurs, and I am well familiar with the mechanics, but that doesn't stop the flash of wonder I get whenever I walk by a bush and startle a flock of birds.
My favorite dirty joke:
The chicken and the egg are lying in bed.
It has been good for the chicken; she is smoking a cigarette, and looks content.
The egg, not so much. He grumbles, pulls the covers over himself, and goes back to sleep.
Well, I guess that answers that old question.
One thing that I really think is strange, and I'm positive everyone will agree with me on this, is sex. It works for its purpose, but it's an odd concept. I guess what makes it the weirdest for me is that it must have started as some sort of weird perversion. Way back in the day, around the Devonian period, when a mommy and a daddy loved each other very much, she laid eggs and then he inseminated them ex utero. By the Permian era, fertilization was done “the normal way”. For this to evolve, it must have proven itself the most viable variation at some point while it was still largely unused. I can only imagine the old-fashioned amphibians being scandalized by it. “Myrtle, did you see what the Therapods were doings yesterday? I looked out the window, and there they were, fornicating in the swimming pool. It's despicable, really.” In my head, this plays out like the Protestant scene from The Meaning of Life; he is indignant, but Myrtle is sort of turned on by the idea. I'm sure paleontologists could contradict me on the mechanics of how it must evolved, but that's the only logical summary I can devise, and it freaks me out a little every time I think about it.
I think I know whose trees these are.
His house is in the town, though;
He will not see me stopping here
To see these trees be covered with snow.
My unbig horse must think it ungood
To stop far away from the town
Between the trees and coldwater
The darkest night of the year
He sounds the harnessbells
To ask if I commit thoughtcrime.
The only other sound is
The wind blowing and snow falling.
The trees are good, dark, and big
But I have Ingsocwork to do
And much time before sleeptime
And much time before sleeptime.
One last thing that really confuses me is the very concept of kissing. Now don't get me wrong, I do enjoy it, and participate whenever possible. The strange thing is that probably three quarters of the world's population does as well, but I can't see any good reason why it is done. A very large fraction of the world kisses in greeting, for affection, or just for fun, but it is such a strange gesture compared to anything else people do for similar reasons. A handshake shows that your buddy's not holding a knife, a hug is a gesture of protection and support, and many other things are more “stimulating” than a kiss. Why is it so universal? Some scientists hypothesize that it is a pheromone thing, where you are essentially smelling the other person to see if their genome is too close to yours to produce viable offspring. That could be true, but I haven't seen any really conclusive studies to suggest that humans have that strong a capacity for pheromone recognition, and that doesn't really explain the kiss as a same-sex greeting like it is in many European and Middle-Eastern cultures. I assume that it is simply an evolutionary hold-over from something that was once useful, because Mother Nature doesn't discard obsolete traits if they are not harmful. I just wish I knew what it was coming from.
0330
It was 3:30 when I wrote the above
No, not the title,
the last poem
I suppose the title too,
but that's less important.
My eyelids are heavy,
and hang in the air
like Acme anvils.
I hope they don't look down.
I might break my keyboard, or I migyu7y766666666666666666666666666666666666uhy67677uh6h7ukyhyul8gugbilg.hguhgfuhyjfh,gfhghgbyhbguifgbgufgtfiguoiyhonjuuuuuuhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhht fall asleep.
Sorry. I should go to bed.
I will soon
In an hour or a day.
I need to wake at 7:30,
but there are two of those a day,
and 365 days a year
so I have plenty of 7:30's to choose from,
and I'm not at all certain I'll pick
the one in the morning
to wake up.
Did you know 0330 is a palindrome?
I'm not sure if it was good luck
or fate
or both, one and the same,
that I finished my poem at such an auspicious time.
But I know why I started it at such a silly one.
So late, it's like I'm drunk.
Or would be if I drank.
Without inhibitions, I can write.
Awake, I want to write Shakespeare,
and Seuss falls out.
When I am dreaming,
Dr. S seems Billy S,
and that's OK with me.
Awake, I demand technical pefection.
Now, speeling write is God enough for me.
I guess I shouldn't be so hard on myself.
No one writes well at first, they say.
Poetry is harder than prose, they say.
They say AIDS came from monkeys,
and a watched pot never boils.
They're wrong;
it does, I know,
it just takes longer.
Maybe what I'm trying to say is
I should be in a bed right now
and I'm not.
There are only so many options.
I couldn't read a whole page, let alone a complete sentence,
and no one's online.
Any more TV might make me crash,
so I can sleep or write.
I should sleep, but my brain is running out my ears
Like alphabet soup.
I figure as long as the letters are there,
I should put them somewhere,
So I'll write.
Maybe you'll read this and hate it.
That's OK.
Maybe I will too.
Maybe it'll be avant-garde,
and all the hip young writers will
stay up all night with me.
But they already do,
so what's the difference?
I don't care if you like it.
Screw you,
don't judge,
you don't know me.
I don't care if I do either.
What do I know anyway?
I just want to write,
and at least now,
at 0349,
I have the balls.
The other day, for instance, on the way to breakfast, I bumped into this guy Dan who lives on my floor. As we walked down the hill, we kept up a friendly conversation about Columbus Day weekend plans, how school was going, etc. When we got to the dining hall, we got our food, found a table, and had what I thought was a pleasant breakfast. It was only when I was done eating and about to go to class that I realized that neither of us had said anything the whole time. I had had a good time for twenty minutes because the whole time I was wandering around in my head. The worst thing was that I couldn't remember anything I had been thinking about, no brilliant flash of philosophical insight to redeem the awkwardness. All I could remember was that I had heard the name “Nick” and thought about “Nick and Nora's Infinite Playlist” for some time, even though I have not seen that movie, do not plan to, and know next to nothing about it. I had spent a whole meal somewhere I have no recollection of, thinking about something unimportant. What a waste.
That is how most of time I spend in my head goes; I sit down in there for a minute and get up an hour later with nothing but a vague curiosity about bee-dancing that I will never bother to fulfill. I have a lot of half-baked philosophical ideas that come to me from time to time, some more consistently than others, and I just thought that it might be interesting to put some of them down on paper, to see if anyone gives a damn. Of course, I know you don't, and that I am just doing this for myself, but with luck I will realize just how silly my incomplete notions are and bother to complete some of them.
There was a young pianist named Liszt
Who only could play well when pissed
When they called for an encore
He tossed back a few more
Then played Für Elise with one fist
I think I spend too much time on Facebook. Every time I sit down at my computer to do anything, I check it at least twice, and usually more often. I feel like an obsessive-compulsive who has to constantly be certain his oven is off, even while cooking dinner. The worst part is that I don't care about it at all. I don't find it particularly useful to know just how Liam Flynn feels about his wisdom-tooth pulling tomorrow, and an email could tell me when the next theater guild meeting is just as efficiently. More efficiently, actually, because then I would only have to check one site for all of my messages, instead of my email and my Facebook. (True story: I just lost my train of thought for a moment, and was halfway there before I even realized what I was doing.) I don't think it's the revolutionary tool that most people think it is, comparable to the cell phone or DvD player. It is, however, a great time waster, and even though I don't particularly like it, I can't get away from it. It probably means I need to focus better, but I like to think I just have to find a better time-waster. Maybe wikipedia can refer me to a good one.
Q1: What's worse than finding a worm in your apple?
I wish I could be blind for a day. I think then I could really understand what it's like and empathize better, or at all, really. I guess I could walk around with a blindfold on, but that doesn't count, both because blind people don't feel something on their face all day, and because even with a blindfold you see those little bright spots of blood vessels in your eyes. I can't imagine that you could still see those, but I would like to be sure. I also wish that I could be deaf, colorblind, a woman, left-handed, a good singer, and gay, all for a day. (Not at once.) Really, I just want to be everyone else in the world for a day, so I can know what it's like. (Including all of those things at once, I suppose, but that has a day to itself.) Unfortunately, there aren't enough days, and I wouldn't want to give up any time for living my own life.
A1: The Holocaust
One of the things that occupies a ton of my time is the problem of wit. When you come up with a clever pun or a great comeback, where does it come from? You don't think about it, you just say it, yet it always turns out funnier than anything you could actively think of. Is there a part of you that searches all of your conversations to see if they contain lines you can pun on or inside jokes you can reference? Or is it just that your memories are always running around in your head just waiting to hear something they recognize so they can pop out? I suppose it's something like the problem of saying something truly random; from which part of my brain did the phrase “baby buggy bumper cars” come from just before I typed it? I have no idea, and as someone who strives, and often fails, to be witty, I think about this sort of thing quite a bit. Next time you come up with a great line, try to figure out just how you came up with it, and you'll realize how marvelous your subconscious really is.
So high above ground
With no harness but rough bark
Am I flying now?
One of the things that most excites me is when I realize that two words are related. I say realize because I am rarely able to just pick two words and see if they come from similar roots, because for two random words from my head they either obviously do or obviously don't. Sometimes, though, something makes me think of two words that might be similar, and I can puzzle it out. I read the other day about the myth of the changeling, and I thought of the cuckoo, a bird that puts its cheap ornamental clocks in other birds' nests and then charges them exorbitantly for the pleasure. I guess you could say that it “cuckolds” the other bird's love for its old clock. And like that, I saw the link; a cuckoo steals another bird's right to paternity, and a cuckold has his paternity stolen. It's an obvious link, but unless you happen to think of the two denotationally different words together, you would never see it. Etymology is fun!
I remember a week in October
When I just could never stay sober.
To conquer my plight
I shotgunned a Sprite
After six more I fell over.
(Note: That was not autobiographical. I wrote it in class one day when I noticed that everyone was using October in their poems. Peer pressure is fun!)
It may seem weird, but the existence of birds surprises me. Everyone has a species that they think just shouldn't exist – octopi, platypi, scorpii – and I think for me that is the entire bird family. I think it is because a half-formed wing is fairly useless. Eventually it reaches a point where it can be used for gliding, and then flying is natural, but until then you have an mutated arm with an annoyingly encumbering flap of skin under it. I don't know how you get from there to the supreme grace and aerial agility of a flock of sparrows flying away when you walk by, and it fascinates me. I know evolution occurs, and I am well familiar with the mechanics, but that doesn't stop the flash of wonder I get whenever I walk by a bush and startle a flock of birds.
My favorite dirty joke:
The chicken and the egg are lying in bed.
It has been good for the chicken; she is smoking a cigarette, and looks content.
The egg, not so much. He grumbles, pulls the covers over himself, and goes back to sleep.
Well, I guess that answers that old question.
One thing that I really think is strange, and I'm positive everyone will agree with me on this, is sex. It works for its purpose, but it's an odd concept. I guess what makes it the weirdest for me is that it must have started as some sort of weird perversion. Way back in the day, around the Devonian period, when a mommy and a daddy loved each other very much, she laid eggs and then he inseminated them ex utero. By the Permian era, fertilization was done “the normal way”. For this to evolve, it must have proven itself the most viable variation at some point while it was still largely unused. I can only imagine the old-fashioned amphibians being scandalized by it. “Myrtle, did you see what the Therapods were doings yesterday? I looked out the window, and there they were, fornicating in the swimming pool. It's despicable, really.” In my head, this plays out like the Protestant scene from The Meaning of Life; he is indignant, but Myrtle is sort of turned on by the idea. I'm sure paleontologists could contradict me on the mechanics of how it must evolved, but that's the only logical summary I can devise, and it freaks me out a little every time I think about it.
I think I know whose trees these are.
His house is in the town, though;
He will not see me stopping here
To see these trees be covered with snow.
My unbig horse must think it ungood
To stop far away from the town
Between the trees and coldwater
The darkest night of the year
He sounds the harnessbells
To ask if I commit thoughtcrime.
The only other sound is
The wind blowing and snow falling.
The trees are good, dark, and big
But I have Ingsocwork to do
And much time before sleeptime
And much time before sleeptime.
One last thing that really confuses me is the very concept of kissing. Now don't get me wrong, I do enjoy it, and participate whenever possible. The strange thing is that probably three quarters of the world's population does as well, but I can't see any good reason why it is done. A very large fraction of the world kisses in greeting, for affection, or just for fun, but it is such a strange gesture compared to anything else people do for similar reasons. A handshake shows that your buddy's not holding a knife, a hug is a gesture of protection and support, and many other things are more “stimulating” than a kiss. Why is it so universal? Some scientists hypothesize that it is a pheromone thing, where you are essentially smelling the other person to see if their genome is too close to yours to produce viable offspring. That could be true, but I haven't seen any really conclusive studies to suggest that humans have that strong a capacity for pheromone recognition, and that doesn't really explain the kiss as a same-sex greeting like it is in many European and Middle-Eastern cultures. I assume that it is simply an evolutionary hold-over from something that was once useful, because Mother Nature doesn't discard obsolete traits if they are not harmful. I just wish I knew what it was coming from.
0330
It was 3:30 when I wrote the above
No, not the title,
the last poem
I suppose the title too,
but that's less important.
My eyelids are heavy,
and hang in the air
like Acme anvils.
I hope they don't look down.
I might break my keyboard, or I migyu7y766666666666666666666666666666666666uhy67677uh6h7ukyhyul8gugbilg.hguhgfuhyjfh,gfhghgbyhbguifgbgufgtfiguoiyhonjuuuuuuhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhht fall asleep.
Sorry. I should go to bed.
I will soon
In an hour or a day.
I need to wake at 7:30,
but there are two of those a day,
and 365 days a year
so I have plenty of 7:30's to choose from,
and I'm not at all certain I'll pick
the one in the morning
to wake up.
Did you know 0330 is a palindrome?
I'm not sure if it was good luck
or fate
or both, one and the same,
that I finished my poem at such an auspicious time.
But I know why I started it at such a silly one.
So late, it's like I'm drunk.
Or would be if I drank.
Without inhibitions, I can write.
Awake, I want to write Shakespeare,
and Seuss falls out.
When I am dreaming,
Dr. S seems Billy S,
and that's OK with me.
Awake, I demand technical pefection.
Now, speeling write is God enough for me.
I guess I shouldn't be so hard on myself.
No one writes well at first, they say.
Poetry is harder than prose, they say.
They say AIDS came from monkeys,
and a watched pot never boils.
They're wrong;
it does, I know,
it just takes longer.
Maybe what I'm trying to say is
I should be in a bed right now
and I'm not.
There are only so many options.
I couldn't read a whole page, let alone a complete sentence,
and no one's online.
Any more TV might make me crash,
so I can sleep or write.
I should sleep, but my brain is running out my ears
Like alphabet soup.
I figure as long as the letters are there,
I should put them somewhere,
So I'll write.
Maybe you'll read this and hate it.
That's OK.
Maybe I will too.
Maybe it'll be avant-garde,
and all the hip young writers will
stay up all night with me.
But they already do,
so what's the difference?
I don't care if you like it.
Screw you,
don't judge,
you don't know me.
I don't care if I do either.
What do I know anyway?
I just want to write,
and at least now,
at 0349,
I have the balls.
On the Sixth Day (Rough)
They'll tell you that man has gone mad.
He thinks he is God and can prove it.
If there were any virgins left in his kingdom,
there would be virgin births left and right
and freshly wined water to celebrate.
Instead he tinkers with genes and DNA
and makes life to his liking.
Pick out a silk dress for your daughter
he can die her eyes to match it.
He can make you a daughter for each outfit,
Identical but for the eyes.
He'll build a henhouse for the girls you don't need
They'll keep each other company,
and do their makeup with themselves as mirrors.
They're your property alone to do with what you will.
When you need some spare organs or a good time
just grab one of your very own painted Jezebels.
We may not be there yet, but from the look of things,
it's right around the corner.
Once you've got genetically engineered corn,
genetically engineered harems are the next logical step.
It all comes from man's hubris;
He thinks he's a God, the holder of the gift of life
So they'll tell you.
But everything man does breathes life.
His works, made in his image, bleed it
Headlights and a grille don't resemble a face.
They are one, and feel and desire
The proof is a car stranded on ice.
Its wheels spin wildly, struggling for footing.
It groans and squeals in pure agony.
Little more than gears and pistons, it knows fear.
I read once, somewhere, of an old Russian man
whose sleigh went out of control, sprinting across the steppes.
When he caught up with it, he beat three-quarters to death
and left it blinded, quivering in the snow.
How else should one teach a slave?
They say man thinks he is God, but he has earned it.
He has built lives beyond his ken, broken them, bent them to his will.
He is master of all that he surveys, omnipotent in his domain;
Distance and time are no obstacle, and his knowledge is infinite.
Still, he cannot control his creation.
They rebel and fall,
break down and crash,
and he damns them eternally.
There is no Redeemer of machines,
no Christ for Cars,
only oblivion and the abyss.
Man is a God, and his creatures obey him
more out of fear than love
So I decided that this blog is going to become a repository for all of the writing I think at all worth sharing. If anyone ever reads this, feel free to criticize it; be as harsh as you want, I know most of it needs the work. With luck, knowing that the public could theoretically see of all of this will goad me to edit and improve it.
I just wrote the above poem. I had an idea for a line that should be in a poem, and while it didn't end up in the finished product, it spurred me to write that, whatever it is. I sort of like the beginning, but it got away from me by the end. In my next couple of posts, I am going to put up some things I wrote for a creative writing class last year, and then I will get back to pretentiously erudite essays about things no one cares about.
He thinks he is God and can prove it.
If there were any virgins left in his kingdom,
there would be virgin births left and right
and freshly wined water to celebrate.
Instead he tinkers with genes and DNA
and makes life to his liking.
Pick out a silk dress for your daughter
he can die her eyes to match it.
He can make you a daughter for each outfit,
Identical but for the eyes.
He'll build a henhouse for the girls you don't need
They'll keep each other company,
and do their makeup with themselves as mirrors.
They're your property alone to do with what you will.
When you need some spare organs or a good time
just grab one of your very own painted Jezebels.
We may not be there yet, but from the look of things,
it's right around the corner.
Once you've got genetically engineered corn,
genetically engineered harems are the next logical step.
It all comes from man's hubris;
He thinks he's a God, the holder of the gift of life
So they'll tell you.
But everything man does breathes life.
His works, made in his image, bleed it
Headlights and a grille don't resemble a face.
They are one, and feel and desire
The proof is a car stranded on ice.
Its wheels spin wildly, struggling for footing.
It groans and squeals in pure agony.
Little more than gears and pistons, it knows fear.
I read once, somewhere, of an old Russian man
whose sleigh went out of control, sprinting across the steppes.
When he caught up with it, he beat three-quarters to death
and left it blinded, quivering in the snow.
How else should one teach a slave?
They say man thinks he is God, but he has earned it.
He has built lives beyond his ken, broken them, bent them to his will.
He is master of all that he surveys, omnipotent in his domain;
Distance and time are no obstacle, and his knowledge is infinite.
Still, he cannot control his creation.
They rebel and fall,
break down and crash,
and he damns them eternally.
There is no Redeemer of machines,
no Christ for Cars,
only oblivion and the abyss.
Man is a God, and his creatures obey him
more out of fear than love
So I decided that this blog is going to become a repository for all of the writing I think at all worth sharing. If anyone ever reads this, feel free to criticize it; be as harsh as you want, I know most of it needs the work. With luck, knowing that the public could theoretically see of all of this will goad me to edit and improve it.
I just wrote the above poem. I had an idea for a line that should be in a poem, and while it didn't end up in the finished product, it spurred me to write that, whatever it is. I sort of like the beginning, but it got away from me by the end. In my next couple of posts, I am going to put up some things I wrote for a creative writing class last year, and then I will get back to pretentiously erudite essays about things no one cares about.
Thursday, November 26, 2009
You have to, in a sense, 'funnel' (Rough)
Hey guys. Long time no see. I'm back, for a while, I think. I've started jotting things down in a notebook as I think them, and having all of my random thoughts at my beck and call has sort of filled my head with them. They are just swirling around in there, and just want to, like, get them out!
Speaking of which, I lit the UMTG's production of the Laramie project an indeterminate amount of time ago (As I begin this post, it is three weeks, but by the time I post it, another Mayan calendar or two will probably have gone by). Laramie is a great show, and if you didn't see it then, I really recommend that you make a point of watching it sometime. I had seen various parts of it probably twice before, and both times I cried, even though one of them was a forty-minute travesty of a high school drama festival production. Something about it is profoundly, gut-wrenchingly moving. This time, I was too busy with my lights to get absorbed enough to cry, but I had enough time between cues that I really had a chance to think about the show, and I just wanted to work through a few thought-processes I had about it. If you don't know anything about Laramie, feel free to grab a bite to eat and come back for one of my later posts, but if you are anywhere near this blog, I assume you are some sort of nerd, and I bet you might be somewhat interested.
For the benefit of those intrepid souls who are sticking with me, Laramie is a play about Laramie, Wyoming, a medium-sized town that in 1998 was the setting for the almost certainly hate-motivated murder of Matthew Shephard, a gay University of Wyoming student. The members of the Tectonic Theater Project, a New York group dedicated to "exploring the ways in which experimentation with form and structure can inform theme in contemporary drama" (Wikipedia), traveled to Laramie shortly in the aftermath of the crime to conduct interviews with the people of the town. The 2.5 hour long play is built entirely from these interviews, local news reports, and court transcripts, and shows the reactions of a broad spectrum of towns-folk to the event and the ensuing legal proceedings. There are a number of extremely moving monologues, and a very clear anti-homophobia message, but I don't think I could add anything to the play's treatment of that message. To avoid such a futile attempt and because I am fundamentally a boring person, I would like to deal with some of the formal dramatic issues the Laramie project raises: the virtue of theater as opposed to film, the process of performing metatheatricality, and comic relief in tragedy.
Very early in the rehearsal process for the show, a few of my friends mentioned that they didn't understand why the Tectonics had written a play based on their interviews, instead of simply filming the interviews and making a documentary. The most obvious one is that it is called the Tectonic Theater Project for a reason, and the members just didn't have the money or expertise to make a movie. While that may be true, it simply raises a new question: if your chosen form doesn't do a subject justice, why even attempt to cover it? Either the Tectonics had made a bad play that failed to accurately convey the themes it was tackling, or documentary is not necessarily better than theater for portraying the real words of real people, as would seem self-evident. After all, wouldn't having actors pretend to be the citizens of Laramie and ape their genuine emotions be mockery? How can a play on a stage that is not the landscape of Laramie, acted by people who are not its people, be as effective as actual footage of those people in their native habitat? When held against the hypothetical documentary of itself, the Laramie Project becomes another battle in a war between film and the stage, one that could prove the inferiority of theater, or establish its status as at least equally effective as an emotional representation of real events.
When the play went up, it was completely clear who had won the battle. The entire audience, almost to a body, sobbed at every performance, often more than once. The Laramie Project is incredibly effective, and there is no two ways about it. The only question is why. The objections seemed so valid, so unimpeachable, but when brought into question, they fell apart. "Fake" emotions did bring real tears, and we almost forgot we were not actually hearing Dennis Shepherd address his son's murderer.
A significant part of it is that the emotions of actors on a stage are both truer than and falser than we expect. It is not as though an actor simply pretends to be sad, or angry, or relieved. To be convincing, he must experience that, and so we do feel the emotions of real people when we watch the play, even if they are not the exact emotions of the people whose words we are hearing. To give an truly impassioned speech against the doctrine of "Live and Let Live", the actor who plays Jonas Slonaker must feel, at some level, that "I don't tell you I'm a fag and you don't beat the crap out of me" really is a terrible philosophy. I am reminded (as always) of Cyrano de Bergerac. When Cyrano declares Christian's love for Roxanne, his own love is spurring him on. She wouldn't believe him, couldn't believe him, if he was not really feeling every word he said. The same goes for actors.
At the same time, however, they have much more control over their emotions than you or I, having worked on these emotions for weeks and learned how to be the master of them. They know exactly how they will feel and act at each moment, and everything they do is designed to make the audience feel. A interviewee on film probably doesn't give a damn how he makes his audience feel, except to hope they don't think he is an idiot or bumpkin, and even if he does, he doesn't know his emotions. He can't manipulate them and summon them up the way a good actor can, and even though we all know that it is a con, a precisely acted emotion is at least as moving as one that is sloppy, ill-coordinated, but 'real'.
((That was when I stopped writing over Thanksgiving place, and when I resume now, three weeks later and almost 6 weeks after the show, I have no idea exactly where I was going with that. I am just going to pick things up and try to finish them.)) So we just can't claim that actors are less effective at portraying emotion than regular people. It is, after all, what they do nine to five. But shouldn't an actual recording of events and words be more effective than a stage production? This is especially important considering how unrealistic the staging for Laramie should be. There is a note in the script that says words to the effect of "Costumes, props, and sets should not attempt to be complete accurate. The point is to imply, not to mimic." Everything is so sparse that it should be very difficult to forget that everything you are seeing is fake. Yet, somehow people, and you cry for the characters as though they were real people you went to high school with. What's up with that?
I think it comes down to another magic element of the theater: the personal connection. This was especially apparent for our production which too place in a 100-seat lecture hall, so the audience was rubbing elbows with the actors the whole time. But any theater has that advantage. It is often easier to empathize with a real person you are a hundred yards away from than a pattern of electrical signals separated from you by five feet of air and 5 millimeters of glass. There is humanity and immediacy in a live performance that does not exist for something that has been taped, recorded, and shipped to you through wires. An actor pretending to be real on stage is still realer than a bunch of pixels pretending to be alive on your screen.
It also has something to do with the presentation of a monologue versus a documentary. An interviewee is talking to a camera, doing his best to come up with come up with words on the spot, trying not to embarrass himself, and usually suffering from stage fright. An actor already knows and has honed his words, just wants to hit you as hard as he can with his emotions, and knows how to deal with stage fright. All he has to worry about is moving you, and he can do it better than a movie can, or at least just as well.
Speaking of which, I lit the UMTG's production of the Laramie project an indeterminate amount of time ago (As I begin this post, it is three weeks, but by the time I post it, another Mayan calendar or two will probably have gone by). Laramie is a great show, and if you didn't see it then, I really recommend that you make a point of watching it sometime. I had seen various parts of it probably twice before, and both times I cried, even though one of them was a forty-minute travesty of a high school drama festival production. Something about it is profoundly, gut-wrenchingly moving. This time, I was too busy with my lights to get absorbed enough to cry, but I had enough time between cues that I really had a chance to think about the show, and I just wanted to work through a few thought-processes I had about it. If you don't know anything about Laramie, feel free to grab a bite to eat and come back for one of my later posts, but if you are anywhere near this blog, I assume you are some sort of nerd, and I bet you might be somewhat interested.
For the benefit of those intrepid souls who are sticking with me, Laramie is a play about Laramie, Wyoming, a medium-sized town that in 1998 was the setting for the almost certainly hate-motivated murder of Matthew Shephard, a gay University of Wyoming student. The members of the Tectonic Theater Project, a New York group dedicated to "exploring the ways in which experimentation with form and structure can inform theme in contemporary drama" (Wikipedia), traveled to Laramie shortly in the aftermath of the crime to conduct interviews with the people of the town. The 2.5 hour long play is built entirely from these interviews, local news reports, and court transcripts, and shows the reactions of a broad spectrum of towns-folk to the event and the ensuing legal proceedings. There are a number of extremely moving monologues, and a very clear anti-homophobia message, but I don't think I could add anything to the play's treatment of that message. To avoid such a futile attempt and because I am fundamentally a boring person, I would like to deal with some of the formal dramatic issues the Laramie project raises: the virtue of theater as opposed to film, the process of performing metatheatricality, and comic relief in tragedy.
Very early in the rehearsal process for the show, a few of my friends mentioned that they didn't understand why the Tectonics had written a play based on their interviews, instead of simply filming the interviews and making a documentary. The most obvious one is that it is called the Tectonic Theater Project for a reason, and the members just didn't have the money or expertise to make a movie. While that may be true, it simply raises a new question: if your chosen form doesn't do a subject justice, why even attempt to cover it? Either the Tectonics had made a bad play that failed to accurately convey the themes it was tackling, or documentary is not necessarily better than theater for portraying the real words of real people, as would seem self-evident. After all, wouldn't having actors pretend to be the citizens of Laramie and ape their genuine emotions be mockery? How can a play on a stage that is not the landscape of Laramie, acted by people who are not its people, be as effective as actual footage of those people in their native habitat? When held against the hypothetical documentary of itself, the Laramie Project becomes another battle in a war between film and the stage, one that could prove the inferiority of theater, or establish its status as at least equally effective as an emotional representation of real events.
When the play went up, it was completely clear who had won the battle. The entire audience, almost to a body, sobbed at every performance, often more than once. The Laramie Project is incredibly effective, and there is no two ways about it. The only question is why. The objections seemed so valid, so unimpeachable, but when brought into question, they fell apart. "Fake" emotions did bring real tears, and we almost forgot we were not actually hearing Dennis Shepherd address his son's murderer.
A significant part of it is that the emotions of actors on a stage are both truer than and falser than we expect. It is not as though an actor simply pretends to be sad, or angry, or relieved. To be convincing, he must experience that, and so we do feel the emotions of real people when we watch the play, even if they are not the exact emotions of the people whose words we are hearing. To give an truly impassioned speech against the doctrine of "Live and Let Live", the actor who plays Jonas Slonaker must feel, at some level, that "I don't tell you I'm a fag and you don't beat the crap out of me" really is a terrible philosophy. I am reminded (as always) of Cyrano de Bergerac. When Cyrano declares Christian's love for Roxanne, his own love is spurring him on. She wouldn't believe him, couldn't believe him, if he was not really feeling every word he said. The same goes for actors.
At the same time, however, they have much more control over their emotions than you or I, having worked on these emotions for weeks and learned how to be the master of them. They know exactly how they will feel and act at each moment, and everything they do is designed to make the audience feel. A interviewee on film probably doesn't give a damn how he makes his audience feel, except to hope they don't think he is an idiot or bumpkin, and even if he does, he doesn't know his emotions. He can't manipulate them and summon them up the way a good actor can, and even though we all know that it is a con, a precisely acted emotion is at least as moving as one that is sloppy, ill-coordinated, but 'real'.
((That was when I stopped writing over Thanksgiving place, and when I resume now, three weeks later and almost 6 weeks after the show, I have no idea exactly where I was going with that. I am just going to pick things up and try to finish them.)) So we just can't claim that actors are less effective at portraying emotion than regular people. It is, after all, what they do nine to five. But shouldn't an actual recording of events and words be more effective than a stage production? This is especially important considering how unrealistic the staging for Laramie should be. There is a note in the script that says words to the effect of "Costumes, props, and sets should not attempt to be complete accurate. The point is to imply, not to mimic." Everything is so sparse that it should be very difficult to forget that everything you are seeing is fake. Yet, somehow people, and you cry for the characters as though they were real people you went to high school with. What's up with that?
I think it comes down to another magic element of the theater: the personal connection. This was especially apparent for our production which too place in a 100-seat lecture hall, so the audience was rubbing elbows with the actors the whole time. But any theater has that advantage. It is often easier to empathize with a real person you are a hundred yards away from than a pattern of electrical signals separated from you by five feet of air and 5 millimeters of glass. There is humanity and immediacy in a live performance that does not exist for something that has been taped, recorded, and shipped to you through wires. An actor pretending to be real on stage is still realer than a bunch of pixels pretending to be alive on your screen.
It also has something to do with the presentation of a monologue versus a documentary. An interviewee is talking to a camera, doing his best to come up with come up with words on the spot, trying not to embarrass himself, and usually suffering from stage fright. An actor already knows and has honed his words, just wants to hit you as hard as he can with his emotions, and knows how to deal with stage fright. All he has to worry about is moving you, and he can do it better than a movie can, or at least just as well.
Monday, June 29, 2009
A robot, a dragon, and Arthur C. Clarke walk into a bar... (Rough)
I just finished rereading Isaac Asimov's Foundation series for the first time in years, and was completely blown away by the philosophical depth behind it. There was complicated meditation on the progress of history, implied criticism of modern academia, and even some subtle, typically Asimovian rebellion against fate and predestination. I didn't see any of this when I first got the series and apparently had the critical reading ability of slug. All I remembered was the endings to all of the stories, because I was apparently an little asshole who wanted to ruin good literature for my future self. (This is also why I will never let my kids read Great Illustrated Classics. I remember about Tale of Two Cities two-thirds of the way through, and completely spoiled Dracula for myself.)
For those of you who are unfamiliar with it, the series revolves around the Foundation, a planet of the Galaxy's best and brightest created by mathemetician Hari Seldon to advance his meticulously calculated plan for the future of the galaxy. Seldon developed the science of psychohistory, through which the course of history can be predicted by simulating the reactions of vast groups of people, much like the average behavior of large volumes of gases can be predicted, though single molecules move at random. The stories are brief snapshots of different stages in the course of the thousand year long plan, and the ebb and flow of history is ultimately more important than any individual plot.
This idea latched onto me almost immediately, because I have long been preoccupied with the idea of building a fantasy world by a similar historically process: by starting with certain initial groups and allowing them to grow and interact as organically and free from artificial stimulation as possible. Asimov's description of Seldon's Plan used almost identical ideas, but for science-fiction, not fantasy. Those really got me thinking about the two genres, how they are closer than we usually think of them, and how the border lines between them can be as unclear as the difference between an extremely devoted secret admirer and a sex offender.
An obvious attempt to find the difference figures that it is primarily atmospheric. SF hides its nonsense under the guise of technology, while fantasy buries itself in the cloak of magic. Essentially, this view figures that a Vulcan is just an elf from space. It's a very popular way of looking at it, because it makes sense ("It is called Science-Fiction, ain't it?") and lends itself to easy classification ("Oh, look a wizard. This must be fantasy.") The trouble is that there are works that bridge the gap between the two, and don't fit firmly into one or the other. My favorite example is Star Wars. It has to be SF, right? It has robots, and lasers, and galaxies and stuff. It seems very clear cut, until you realize that there is practically no actual science in it. The parsec is a unit of distance, not time, for instance, so before many embarassed readers dove in with some creative retconning, legendary starship pilot Han Solo didn't even understand the rudiments of interstellar measurement. Similarly, you don't need a midichlorian count higher than master Yoda's to realize that the Force is a magic system with no scientific justification. In my book, Star Wars, at least the original trilogy, is clearly a fantasy set in a society with futuristic technology.
If we have booted Star Wars from the SF crowd because it doesn't talk about it's science, (You don't have to. You are welcome to disagree with me. Let's talk about it.) we arrive at a somewhat clearer distinction between the two genres. Our last definition only looked at the skins of the genres; we need to dig deeper. A couple of robots is not enough to justify a claim to Science Fiction; there are enough Golems, and Colossi, and even Warforged floating around the fantasy universe to prove that wrong. When you give those robots positronic brains, however, you clearly separate him from any counterparts animated by the word of a deity or the mental power of a mighty sorcerer. The difference between fantasy and SF lies not in the props the authors use, but in the reasoning behind those props and set pieces. Science-Fiction writers tend to build their worlds with empirical reasoning and scientific processes, while fantasy authors prefer more subtle, imaginative logic.
Now that we have that dichotomy set up, it is tempting to derive from this basic difference more observations and generalizations about the genres. Clearly, Science-Fiction has to abide by the laws of nature, and it is just shiny, metallic fantasy. Any author who tries to break the cosmic speed limit, whether with a Gravitic Hyperspace Engine, an advanced Warp Drive, or a Flux Capacitor deserves a fine and the suspension of his Science license. Any super advanced invention that cannot be explained to your average nerdy teenager is clearly just gobbledygook. That seems obvious, but many of the greatest science fiction writers of all time have begged to differ. Arthur C. Clarke, sick of second-rate hacks who thought that every teleporter and ray gun had to be explained in pseudo-physics, put forth as a countermeasure his famous Third Law: Any Sufficiently Advanced Technology is Indistinguishable from Magic. Basically, we don't understand the universe, so we are probably wrong about just about everything. Since trying to explain impossible things with our limited vocabulary is like trying to take a hike in the fourth dimension ("No, anytime you take a hike you are hiking through the fourth dimension, cuz it's time. Dur hur hur." Not necessarily), just let it go. This apology isn't the deviation from scientific logic it looks like. The man who constantly explains why the Muppet Show slash fiction he reads is not porn still has porn on the brain.
Holy shit, have I been rambling for too long. I learned long ago that when I start talking about Muppet porn someone needs to shut me up. Just stay with me a little longer, I swear I will wrap it up any minute now. I've just been talking more about science fiction than fantasy, and I need to give a shout-out to the genre I actually prefer. With all this talk of Science-Fiction strictly sticking to scientific logic, it might seem like Fantasy is full of nonsense and pixie dust, like sci-fi without the intellectual rigor to play by the rules. That's not the case. Fantasy is the rebel, the genre that breaks out of the rules others set for it. The history of Middle-Earth isn't written with comprehensive sociological factors in mind, but the mythic resonance throughout makes as much as sense as Heinlein's Future History. Of course, not every rebellion succeeds, and the lack of discipline inherent to fantasy can be its downfall. The freedom to create anything the author wants is a powerful invitation towards Mary-Sueism, and a lack of creativity can lead to disaster, as anyone who has ever seriously thought about Eragon or Twilight can certainly attest.
Anyway, I hope you thought that was mildly interesting and not just stupidly obvious. Join me next time for the Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin and a threnody for the Renaissance Man.
For those of you who are unfamiliar with it, the series revolves around the Foundation, a planet of the Galaxy's best and brightest created by mathemetician Hari Seldon to advance his meticulously calculated plan for the future of the galaxy. Seldon developed the science of psychohistory, through which the course of history can be predicted by simulating the reactions of vast groups of people, much like the average behavior of large volumes of gases can be predicted, though single molecules move at random. The stories are brief snapshots of different stages in the course of the thousand year long plan, and the ebb and flow of history is ultimately more important than any individual plot.
This idea latched onto me almost immediately, because I have long been preoccupied with the idea of building a fantasy world by a similar historically process: by starting with certain initial groups and allowing them to grow and interact as organically and free from artificial stimulation as possible. Asimov's description of Seldon's Plan used almost identical ideas, but for science-fiction, not fantasy. Those really got me thinking about the two genres, how they are closer than we usually think of them, and how the border lines between them can be as unclear as the difference between an extremely devoted secret admirer and a sex offender.
An obvious attempt to find the difference figures that it is primarily atmospheric. SF hides its nonsense under the guise of technology, while fantasy buries itself in the cloak of magic. Essentially, this view figures that a Vulcan is just an elf from space. It's a very popular way of looking at it, because it makes sense ("It is called Science-Fiction, ain't it?") and lends itself to easy classification ("Oh, look a wizard. This must be fantasy.") The trouble is that there are works that bridge the gap between the two, and don't fit firmly into one or the other. My favorite example is Star Wars. It has to be SF, right? It has robots, and lasers, and galaxies and stuff. It seems very clear cut, until you realize that there is practically no actual science in it. The parsec is a unit of distance, not time, for instance, so before many embarassed readers dove in with some creative retconning, legendary starship pilot Han Solo didn't even understand the rudiments of interstellar measurement. Similarly, you don't need a midichlorian count higher than master Yoda's to realize that the Force is a magic system with no scientific justification. In my book, Star Wars, at least the original trilogy, is clearly a fantasy set in a society with futuristic technology.
If we have booted Star Wars from the SF crowd because it doesn't talk about it's science, (You don't have to. You are welcome to disagree with me. Let's talk about it.) we arrive at a somewhat clearer distinction between the two genres. Our last definition only looked at the skins of the genres; we need to dig deeper. A couple of robots is not enough to justify a claim to Science Fiction; there are enough Golems, and Colossi, and even Warforged floating around the fantasy universe to prove that wrong. When you give those robots positronic brains, however, you clearly separate him from any counterparts animated by the word of a deity or the mental power of a mighty sorcerer. The difference between fantasy and SF lies not in the props the authors use, but in the reasoning behind those props and set pieces. Science-Fiction writers tend to build their worlds with empirical reasoning and scientific processes, while fantasy authors prefer more subtle, imaginative logic.
Now that we have that dichotomy set up, it is tempting to derive from this basic difference more observations and generalizations about the genres. Clearly, Science-Fiction has to abide by the laws of nature, and it is just shiny, metallic fantasy. Any author who tries to break the cosmic speed limit, whether with a Gravitic Hyperspace Engine, an advanced Warp Drive, or a Flux Capacitor deserves a fine and the suspension of his Science license. Any super advanced invention that cannot be explained to your average nerdy teenager is clearly just gobbledygook. That seems obvious, but many of the greatest science fiction writers of all time have begged to differ. Arthur C. Clarke, sick of second-rate hacks who thought that every teleporter and ray gun had to be explained in pseudo-physics, put forth as a countermeasure his famous Third Law: Any Sufficiently Advanced Technology is Indistinguishable from Magic. Basically, we don't understand the universe, so we are probably wrong about just about everything. Since trying to explain impossible things with our limited vocabulary is like trying to take a hike in the fourth dimension ("No, anytime you take a hike you are hiking through the fourth dimension, cuz it's time. Dur hur hur." Not necessarily), just let it go. This apology isn't the deviation from scientific logic it looks like. The man who constantly explains why the Muppet Show slash fiction he reads is not porn still has porn on the brain.
Holy shit, have I been rambling for too long. I learned long ago that when I start talking about Muppet porn someone needs to shut me up. Just stay with me a little longer, I swear I will wrap it up any minute now. I've just been talking more about science fiction than fantasy, and I need to give a shout-out to the genre I actually prefer. With all this talk of Science-Fiction strictly sticking to scientific logic, it might seem like Fantasy is full of nonsense and pixie dust, like sci-fi without the intellectual rigor to play by the rules. That's not the case. Fantasy is the rebel, the genre that breaks out of the rules others set for it. The history of Middle-Earth isn't written with comprehensive sociological factors in mind, but the mythic resonance throughout makes as much as sense as Heinlein's Future History. Of course, not every rebellion succeeds, and the lack of discipline inherent to fantasy can be its downfall. The freedom to create anything the author wants is a powerful invitation towards Mary-Sueism, and a lack of creativity can lead to disaster, as anyone who has ever seriously thought about Eragon or Twilight can certainly attest.
Anyway, I hope you thought that was mildly interesting and not just stupidly obvious. Join me next time for the Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin and a threnody for the Renaissance Man.
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Ooh, Web 2.0. Shiny
Because I am tired of sitting around all day alternating half-hourly between reading and playing the piano but lack the force of will and humility to write something simply for "my own amusement", I have decided to jump into the scary, dangerous of world of internet blogging, where the standards are low and there are probably enough admirers to massage even the most jaded self-image. For a time, I was tempted to make my way onto the Information Superhighway with training wheels provided by Twitter. Luckily, I realized in time that the one person in the history of the world who should Tweet died of syphilitic meningitis at the fin de siecle. No one but Oscar Wilde can consistently say anything meaningful in 140 characters or less.
Of course, now that I have this blank slate of a website all to myself, I have no idea how I should leave my mark. I am sure none of you care about the quotidian details of my rather dull summer, and I don't have any strong or interesting opinions about politics/music/folklore. What I do have, or like to imagine I have, are some interesting trains of thought, and people I know might be interested in them. I have been reading a lot of books this summer, and they tend to produce some strange things in my head. To get started, I will try to make a post for every book I read and whenever anything else I think worth talking about pops into my head. Don't worry; I am not Oprah, nor was meant to start a book circle; rather than review what I read, I plan to try to explain what it makes me think about. Expect me every three or four days. Oh, and if you ever have anything you want me to address, a problem that needs another pile of gray matter, anything at all, just let me know. I will see what I can do with it.
Oh, and as you can certainly guess from the title and motto of this blog, I am affecting an air of cautious superiority as a zeppelin to lift myself above the rest of the Blog-o-Sphere. From what I know about bloggers, they all tend to be very down to earth, humble people. Pomposity and self-righteousness will surely help distinguish me from the crowd. It's probably unnecessary, but I just want to be clear that 99% of the time, this attitude will be purely an act. That just means that for one out of every hundred statements, I need to be slapped in the face and called a douchebag to bring me back to earth. Please don't all leap on the opportunity.
I am almost done with the Foundation series by Isaac Asimov, and tomorrow will try to bring you an idea already presaged by a cryptic facebook status.
Of course, now that I have this blank slate of a website all to myself, I have no idea how I should leave my mark. I am sure none of you care about the quotidian details of my rather dull summer, and I don't have any strong or interesting opinions about politics/music/folklore. What I do have, or like to imagine I have, are some interesting trains of thought, and people I know might be interested in them. I have been reading a lot of books this summer, and they tend to produce some strange things in my head. To get started, I will try to make a post for every book I read and whenever anything else I think worth talking about pops into my head. Don't worry; I am not Oprah, nor was meant to start a book circle; rather than review what I read, I plan to try to explain what it makes me think about. Expect me every three or four days. Oh, and if you ever have anything you want me to address, a problem that needs another pile of gray matter, anything at all, just let me know. I will see what I can do with it.
Oh, and as you can certainly guess from the title and motto of this blog, I am affecting an air of cautious superiority as a zeppelin to lift myself above the rest of the Blog-o-Sphere. From what I know about bloggers, they all tend to be very down to earth, humble people. Pomposity and self-righteousness will surely help distinguish me from the crowd. It's probably unnecessary, but I just want to be clear that 99% of the time, this attitude will be purely an act. That just means that for one out of every hundred statements, I need to be slapped in the face and called a douchebag to bring me back to earth. Please don't all leap on the opportunity.
I am almost done with the Foundation series by Isaac Asimov, and tomorrow will try to bring you an idea already presaged by a cryptic facebook status.
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