October, 2006: The Letter I Sent To Chuck Palahniuk
Piss, shit or fuck.
Given that everything has already been
done by Jesus or written by Shakespeare, I find myself properly unable
to express myself completely. I’d like to blame those two – but I don’t
like to take the easy outs the rest of my Nintendo generation seems to
want to. I like difficult situations that define instead of easy answers
to redundant questions. I hate rote, but work at a university. Figure
that one out.
Enough of that. I’m writing to you as you are one
of the last great bastions of western intellect and this is my awful,
amateur attempt to save my goddamned eternal soul. Since leaving high
school in 1999, I’ve felt largely disconnected and dissatisfied with the
majority of everything everywhere. At first, I figured it was just my
being shat out into the real world – and keeping busy with large
quantities of Sam Adams and fucking a bunch of girls kept me from
thinking too heavily on it. Now I’m 25, facing down the barrel of 2007
and have done nothing with my life. No higher education, a menial job,
no girlfriend. Unless the afterlife smiles upon a respectable film music
collection – I’m pushing zilch.
At the risk of sounding like
some terrible rock cliché, it all seems for naught. On one hand, I’m
pulled toward the extreme of living some impossible romantic lifestyle
as some kind of wandering journeyman. Maybe Chris McCandless had the
right idea. On the other hand, I also feel the pull to be a working,
shitting, drinking human being that is personable and well-known. The
mess of the situation is like Travis Bickle, Willy Loman and Holden
Caulfield all rolled into one confused mix. I feel singularly like one
of the lost masses.
Everyone tells you that you need to have a
career and a wife and a fairly nice car. However, I can’t seem to get my
hands around it for reasons I don’t understand. Everything is
dissatisfying. People my age seem soft-minded and square-jawed. Either
I’m too mature for my age or being unsociable is the new NBC Today Show
buzzword.
You want goals? How about my being here a year from
now. You want recent accomplishments? How about getting through the last
year.
I won’t regale you with the boredom that details my
everyday life, save to say I haven’t fucked a woman in a year, I spent
the majority of my money on music, I regret quitting smoking and am
generally fed up with a whole lot of things. I sense a lot of such
things in your books – a protagonist as much afraid of the world as he
is being the Übermensch (though I don’t think I’m a Nietzsche-esque
creation).
Am I missing something? Twenty-five and still living
at home. Am I wrong in being dissatisfied with so much? Is it truly too
much to ask for some great moment or crisis to occur, just so I can find
out what I really am? Where was that wrong turn I made? Is life always
hope with empty meaning?
I’m not asking you for answers, per se. A
direction, perhaps. You seem to be an anwser man of sorts and I
probably seem as lost and disjointed as this letter.
I truly
appreciate the chance to write to you, knowing you’ll read this and give
me an honest anwser – be it a “fuck you” or a “fuck that”.
Many ernest thanks to you in advanced for your expected reply and the best of everything to you and yours.
======
November 22, 2006: Chuck's Reply
Dear Justin,
Wow... you want answers from me? After I wrote "Survivor"?
You
at least have a pretty nice family, or my guess is that you'd have fled
at 18. They must make it pretty comfortable, or you'd be out on your
own now. Maybe they like keeping you around.
I hope by the time
this arrives you're feeling better. Maybe even regretting your letter, a
little. Things are always at their worst just before they change. We
seem to have to reach a crisis - suffer enough pain - before we'll
abandon our old way of being, and risk something really new.
The
trick is always recognizing this and holding on. Yes, life is unstable
and slippery and gets sucky fast - but that also means it can get
better, really fast.
To help tide you over until better times,
I'm sending an early Christmas-like stocking package. Here's some
retired book tour stories to fill your head with more darkness. And
other sundry stuff to make a mess when you get the box open.
At
your age, I was terrified. My worst fear was becoming the cautionary
tale my family would tell for generations: Whatever you do with your
life, don't end up like Uncle Chuck. I could see myself dead in some
Marla Singer downtown hotel room. That said, picture yourself dead.
You're dead and rotted and everyone's stopped crying and started to
forget how you looked. You are gone.
Now, worst case realized,
what does that give you the freedom to do? Give yourself ten days to
resolve everything - like you would before a suicide. Tell everyone you
love or hate them. Give away stuff. Let go of all the shit you hold on
to. My bet is that ten days later, you won't die.
Thats just a
secret method I use myself. Like doing your own Human Sacrifice. Die
without dying. Then get born. And just in case no one else says it:
Merry Christmas.
I'll shut up now,
Chuck Palahniuk
Wednesday, January 23, 2013
Tuesday, January 22, 2013
Amanda (Not Her Real Name), Part 3
For over a year, we trade emails and texts. Several times a day. Sometimes twice, some times fifteen times or more. She tells me about how scared she is in her relationship, that her boyfriend is passive-aggressive emotionally abusive. He would never raise a hand to her, but he'd shame her for not loading a dishwasher the way he likes it.
I help as best I can, but tell her theres nothing anyone can do unless she leaves him on her own.
We talk on Skype. Sometimes we talk on the phone. She's the first woman, the only woman to ever use the exact words I've wanted to hear without my goading or leading her to them. She says "I love you" with all the same intensity as a love struck teenager and all the wisdom of someone who has hurt their entire life.
She tells me secrets no one else knows. She tells me about how all her friends disapprove of her boyfriend and how she thinks it won't last. That all my advice is matching up with what everyone else has said already and that she should leave. She goes as far as trying to figure out how'd she move back down here or I up there, balancing out where to live and affordability and her dog.
I'm now carrying the weight and responsibility of a relationship I am not in, so some other asshole can tread water a little longer while the ship sinks. I see this and don't care, I just want her to call me again and again and again after that.
I pick up the phone to call her and she's on the other end without my dialing or the phone ringing. Or she's sitting at her computer at 2 am wondering what I'm doing and an email from me pops up right then, asking her what she's up to. A close friend dies and I call her for comfort; the cat she had since middle school died hours before. A billion tiny moments like this. Too many to count. All supernatural in feeling, all unexplainable to logic. It scares her but she's intrigued, I just revel in it as a sign that everything would work out.
And it did for a while.
I help as best I can, but tell her theres nothing anyone can do unless she leaves him on her own.
We talk on Skype. Sometimes we talk on the phone. She's the first woman, the only woman to ever use the exact words I've wanted to hear without my goading or leading her to them. She says "I love you" with all the same intensity as a love struck teenager and all the wisdom of someone who has hurt their entire life.
She tells me secrets no one else knows. She tells me about how all her friends disapprove of her boyfriend and how she thinks it won't last. That all my advice is matching up with what everyone else has said already and that she should leave. She goes as far as trying to figure out how'd she move back down here or I up there, balancing out where to live and affordability and her dog.
I'm now carrying the weight and responsibility of a relationship I am not in, so some other asshole can tread water a little longer while the ship sinks. I see this and don't care, I just want her to call me again and again and again after that.
I pick up the phone to call her and she's on the other end without my dialing or the phone ringing. Or she's sitting at her computer at 2 am wondering what I'm doing and an email from me pops up right then, asking her what she's up to. A close friend dies and I call her for comfort; the cat she had since middle school died hours before. A billion tiny moments like this. Too many to count. All supernatural in feeling, all unexplainable to logic. It scares her but she's intrigued, I just revel in it as a sign that everything would work out.
And it did for a while.
Thursday, January 17, 2013
Goodbye To All That
Goodbye to longer summer nights, cricket serenatas and long conversations in the dark. To tiki lamps and being the last people at a party, talking to the girl you'll never meet again.
Goodbye to the memories of the 1990s, when we lived in a brighter age. When Pearl Jam was still new, when sci-fi television wasn't pretentious garbage, to hearing Mark Snow's music on Friday night.
Goodbye to that weird, suburban alpenglow during afternoon trips to playgrounds. To laying in the grass with beautiful red haired girls in blue-and-white sundresses. That transition between high school and whatever path brought us here, now beaten to a thin cloud of passing dust.
Goodbye to cool morning sheets, the windows open, the maple leaves touching the screen window as they fall. To weekend morning breakfasts with pancakes and bacon. To long Sundays that dragged on until the dread of Monday crept up right before midnight.
Goodbye to falling in love heedlessly. To that girl who knew that way to look at you and smiled shyly as she put a lock of her hair behind her ear and the warm smell of youth as she put her chin on your shoulder. To not knowing any better and not caring. To being broken hearted and still have the time or the willpower to pull yourself together.
Goodbye to Sousa marching bands at gazebos and comic books for a dollar twenty-five. Goodbye to that sick-sweet smell of hiking trails and tree lines now long gone. To sawdust, asphalt and gravel; grass, tall weeds and blackberry bushes. Classic car shows. Baseball cards. The cat or dog you grew up with. Old suburban legends. Friends you've never seen again.
Goodbye to all that. We were right when we were 16. And nothing here is important anymore.
Goodbye to the memories of the 1990s, when we lived in a brighter age. When Pearl Jam was still new, when sci-fi television wasn't pretentious garbage, to hearing Mark Snow's music on Friday night.
Goodbye to that weird, suburban alpenglow during afternoon trips to playgrounds. To laying in the grass with beautiful red haired girls in blue-and-white sundresses. That transition between high school and whatever path brought us here, now beaten to a thin cloud of passing dust.
Goodbye to cool morning sheets, the windows open, the maple leaves touching the screen window as they fall. To weekend morning breakfasts with pancakes and bacon. To long Sundays that dragged on until the dread of Monday crept up right before midnight.
Goodbye to falling in love heedlessly. To that girl who knew that way to look at you and smiled shyly as she put a lock of her hair behind her ear and the warm smell of youth as she put her chin on your shoulder. To not knowing any better and not caring. To being broken hearted and still have the time or the willpower to pull yourself together.
Goodbye to Sousa marching bands at gazebos and comic books for a dollar twenty-five. Goodbye to that sick-sweet smell of hiking trails and tree lines now long gone. To sawdust, asphalt and gravel; grass, tall weeds and blackberry bushes. Classic car shows. Baseball cards. The cat or dog you grew up with. Old suburban legends. Friends you've never seen again.
Goodbye to all that. We were right when we were 16. And nothing here is important anymore.
Thursday, January 10, 2013
2012 Was A Bad Year To Be Spider-Man (Spoilers)
I grew up in something of an unpleasant household. If you've ever
seen the movie Ordinary People, it's not entirely dissimilar. My mom was
full of fake emotions and cold smiles, her live-in boyfriend is a total
goddamned tool (and looks like Richard Belzer) and I was stuck there,
in that. One of the only ways out was reading comics.
The first one I fell for was Spider-Man sometime in the early nineties right before the big comic book boom. Superman flew, which wasn't very realistic. Batman, though cool, wasn't as cool without powers. Spider-Man was something of a happy medium. He swung around, did amazing feats of gymnastics, ran his mouth at the villain of the month and could lift a car over his head. Sounds good.
I think my first issue was Spectacular Spider-Man #180 which was part of the relentlessly dark Child Within storyline. But despite the fact I was introduced to the wise-cracking wall crawler during a story with such light topics as child abuse, neglect and adulthood guilt - I fell in love with the character and how he moved through the plot. He swung around the city worried about the rest of his life, not unlike how I got around school worrying about home. He was always outmatched by the villains but always walked away, I'd scrap through some fight in the locker room and still make it home. We had similarities.
I read all the Spider-Man comics that came out then. My favorite was either "Amazing" or "Spectacular" depending on the storyline, with the generic "Spider-Man" title in third and the rather blasé "Web Of" title a distant fourth. It was a lot to juggle but thankfully my grandfather adored taking me to the comic shop every week. I have many very strong memories of swinging by T&S Comics and Cards and Dream Factory back in those days.
I ran with Spider-Man until about 1999, so it was a good eight years of my life. I picked up a lot of back issues and trade paperbacks. There was a point that I could tell you the writer and artist on any issue if you told me the title and issue number. My favorite artists was Sal Buschema; when I wanted to be a comic artist his Spidey art was probably my biggest influence along with Bruce Timm's designs on Batman: The Animated Series. I don't draw much anymore, but when I do, those thick blacks and square jaws come out all over again.
A couple years after high school, the first of the Raimi movies came out and I fell hard all over again. The first film (and very, very much the superior second) were goddamned love-letters to the fans. It was as if Raimi went into my brain and pulled out everything right and pure and wrapped it up to hand it to me. "This is for you," he said to me, in a way, not really, but sort of, "everyone will love it but only you will understand it completely."
Arrogant of me? Yes. But that is how deeply those three films spoke to me. I'm not some genius that sees them for what they are and no one else does - but my appreciation may run deeper than most.
This last movie, directed by Marc Webb, was a boring attempt to out tween all the bad supernatural romantic adventures of late. Think of Twilight, swap out the vampirism with spider-powers and you get the jist. However, in the making of the movie, they forgot it was about Spider-Man and not about Peter Parker having a severe case of Aspergers. The film is less about being heroic (and indeed does many unheroic things) and more about someone who is both somehow nerdy and attractively edgy, managing to get a girl (Emma Stone, the one bright spot in a flaccid film) he has no right to deserve because all he does is emotionally take advantage of her. (If you don't believe that last part, the movie ends with him saying "I can't see you anymore" and then 2 minutes later with "But I can't keep that promise" which is way too many mixed signals for anyone, let alone a teenager!, to decipher without an Enigma Machine)
It's obvious that the producers (the same people from the Raimi years) wanted to go left where Raimi went right. The Raimi movies were about heroics and responsibility and proper Horatio Alger themes: Peter gains his powers by accident, loses who he is to them, regains himself when he loses his Uncle to his own inaction and then has many other adventures (Note to self: Spider-Man 2 is more of an origin story than the first one. Make separate entry about just that.). There is also a light/dark segregate father dynamic (Norman Osborne versus Uncle Ben), the legacy of a family line (Harry vows vengeance against Spider-Man, Peter vows against vengeance by being Spider-Man) and all sorts of undercurrents and glimpses of understanding as to why the character has lasted as long as he has. Its almost a Hercules tale: the man with incredible strength and powers is only as heroic as his smallest deeds. After all, Spider-Man lays Norman Osborne to rest in his own highrise apartment.
The most recent film unbinds these ideas entirely. It is actively unheroic. The one example needed is how they handle Uncle Ben's death. In the original 2002 film, Peter watches his uncle die and in a fit of rage, chases the killer to a warehouse where he punches him repeatedly out of grief. In the new film, after Uncle Ben is shot, Parker dons a disguise and runs around New York for nights on end against blonde men who vaguely look like the one who killed his uncle.
The 2002 movie was a crime of passion.
The 2012 movie was an act of unheroic vengeance, willfully acting out for a long stretch of time (days? weeks?) against people of a certain stereotype.
That isn't heroic at all. That isn't Spider-Man.
And now for Amazing Spider-Man 700, where the nefarious Doctor Octopus has switched brains with Peter Parker. Thats right, old Doc Ock is now Spider-Man. I'm not sure why someone thought this was a good idea but I suppose the logic was it didn't sound quite as stupid as the Clone Saga? But the kicker is that Doctor Octopus (now seen as Spider-Man) kills Spider-Man. Well, everyone in New York sees it as Spider-Man killing Doctor Octopus but you get my point.
First off, thats all sorts of ugly. Spider-Man isn't The Punisher; he doesn't kill people and as evil as Doc Ock has been, he's never been much for murder either. He was more of a Mad Scientist type, so he was slightly more cerebral than, oh, The Joker or Sin-Eater or whatever. He was always more interested in making his evil plot work than filling body bags.
But the real point to be made here is this: as a plot, no one would care, but it is probably the worst and most terrible way to end a title after all these years.Your (real) hero dies. The villain wins and impersonates your hero and blah blah blah.
Now we all know this won't last. Peter Parker will come back by some horrible story plot with magic or Thanos or zombies or whatever the flavor of the month is. But did they have to can the book too? Look at the note they're ending the legacy on. Issue 700 is what closes out the title after over 40 years of running and was often Marvel's flagship book and it all amounts to a giant middle finger.
And I take it personally. I have to. I've invested a lot of my own identification (by proxy) in the rights and wrongs and trials of this character. I don't go so far as to say these people are the be-all, end-all and they're ruining the character forever but I do think they're harming it a great deal and pushing the character too far from its center construct. I do think another push this hard would end up making old Web-Head into something near unrecognizable. And where that character goes, so does a part of me - and I am not that kind of Spider-Man.
(Oh, and just in case it didn't occur to you: that means Spider-Ock is sleeping with Mary Jane which is some form of rape if you give it an even cursory glance. So, thank you Marvel and writer Dan Slott for being creepy. Ew.)
The first one I fell for was Spider-Man sometime in the early nineties right before the big comic book boom. Superman flew, which wasn't very realistic. Batman, though cool, wasn't as cool without powers. Spider-Man was something of a happy medium. He swung around, did amazing feats of gymnastics, ran his mouth at the villain of the month and could lift a car over his head. Sounds good.
I think my first issue was Spectacular Spider-Man #180 which was part of the relentlessly dark Child Within storyline. But despite the fact I was introduced to the wise-cracking wall crawler during a story with such light topics as child abuse, neglect and adulthood guilt - I fell in love with the character and how he moved through the plot. He swung around the city worried about the rest of his life, not unlike how I got around school worrying about home. He was always outmatched by the villains but always walked away, I'd scrap through some fight in the locker room and still make it home. We had similarities.
I read all the Spider-Man comics that came out then. My favorite was either "Amazing" or "Spectacular" depending on the storyline, with the generic "Spider-Man" title in third and the rather blasé "Web Of" title a distant fourth. It was a lot to juggle but thankfully my grandfather adored taking me to the comic shop every week. I have many very strong memories of swinging by T&S Comics and Cards and Dream Factory back in those days.
I ran with Spider-Man until about 1999, so it was a good eight years of my life. I picked up a lot of back issues and trade paperbacks. There was a point that I could tell you the writer and artist on any issue if you told me the title and issue number. My favorite artists was Sal Buschema; when I wanted to be a comic artist his Spidey art was probably my biggest influence along with Bruce Timm's designs on Batman: The Animated Series. I don't draw much anymore, but when I do, those thick blacks and square jaws come out all over again.
A couple years after high school, the first of the Raimi movies came out and I fell hard all over again. The first film (and very, very much the superior second) were goddamned love-letters to the fans. It was as if Raimi went into my brain and pulled out everything right and pure and wrapped it up to hand it to me. "This is for you," he said to me, in a way, not really, but sort of, "everyone will love it but only you will understand it completely."
Arrogant of me? Yes. But that is how deeply those three films spoke to me. I'm not some genius that sees them for what they are and no one else does - but my appreciation may run deeper than most.
This last movie, directed by Marc Webb, was a boring attempt to out tween all the bad supernatural romantic adventures of late. Think of Twilight, swap out the vampirism with spider-powers and you get the jist. However, in the making of the movie, they forgot it was about Spider-Man and not about Peter Parker having a severe case of Aspergers. The film is less about being heroic (and indeed does many unheroic things) and more about someone who is both somehow nerdy and attractively edgy, managing to get a girl (Emma Stone, the one bright spot in a flaccid film) he has no right to deserve because all he does is emotionally take advantage of her. (If you don't believe that last part, the movie ends with him saying "I can't see you anymore" and then 2 minutes later with "But I can't keep that promise" which is way too many mixed signals for anyone, let alone a teenager!, to decipher without an Enigma Machine)
It's obvious that the producers (the same people from the Raimi years) wanted to go left where Raimi went right. The Raimi movies were about heroics and responsibility and proper Horatio Alger themes: Peter gains his powers by accident, loses who he is to them, regains himself when he loses his Uncle to his own inaction and then has many other adventures (Note to self: Spider-Man 2 is more of an origin story than the first one. Make separate entry about just that.). There is also a light/dark segregate father dynamic (Norman Osborne versus Uncle Ben), the legacy of a family line (Harry vows vengeance against Spider-Man, Peter vows against vengeance by being Spider-Man) and all sorts of undercurrents and glimpses of understanding as to why the character has lasted as long as he has. Its almost a Hercules tale: the man with incredible strength and powers is only as heroic as his smallest deeds. After all, Spider-Man lays Norman Osborne to rest in his own highrise apartment.
The most recent film unbinds these ideas entirely. It is actively unheroic. The one example needed is how they handle Uncle Ben's death. In the original 2002 film, Peter watches his uncle die and in a fit of rage, chases the killer to a warehouse where he punches him repeatedly out of grief. In the new film, after Uncle Ben is shot, Parker dons a disguise and runs around New York for nights on end against blonde men who vaguely look like the one who killed his uncle.
The 2002 movie was a crime of passion.
The 2012 movie was an act of unheroic vengeance, willfully acting out for a long stretch of time (days? weeks?) against people of a certain stereotype.
That isn't heroic at all. That isn't Spider-Man.
And now for Amazing Spider-Man 700, where the nefarious Doctor Octopus has switched brains with Peter Parker. Thats right, old Doc Ock is now Spider-Man. I'm not sure why someone thought this was a good idea but I suppose the logic was it didn't sound quite as stupid as the Clone Saga? But the kicker is that Doctor Octopus (now seen as Spider-Man) kills Spider-Man. Well, everyone in New York sees it as Spider-Man killing Doctor Octopus but you get my point.
First off, thats all sorts of ugly. Spider-Man isn't The Punisher; he doesn't kill people and as evil as Doc Ock has been, he's never been much for murder either. He was more of a Mad Scientist type, so he was slightly more cerebral than, oh, The Joker or Sin-Eater or whatever. He was always more interested in making his evil plot work than filling body bags.
But the real point to be made here is this: as a plot, no one would care, but it is probably the worst and most terrible way to end a title after all these years.Your (real) hero dies. The villain wins and impersonates your hero and blah blah blah.
Now we all know this won't last. Peter Parker will come back by some horrible story plot with magic or Thanos or zombies or whatever the flavor of the month is. But did they have to can the book too? Look at the note they're ending the legacy on. Issue 700 is what closes out the title after over 40 years of running and was often Marvel's flagship book and it all amounts to a giant middle finger.
And I take it personally. I have to. I've invested a lot of my own identification (by proxy) in the rights and wrongs and trials of this character. I don't go so far as to say these people are the be-all, end-all and they're ruining the character forever but I do think they're harming it a great deal and pushing the character too far from its center construct. I do think another push this hard would end up making old Web-Head into something near unrecognizable. And where that character goes, so does a part of me - and I am not that kind of Spider-Man.
(Oh, and just in case it didn't occur to you: that means Spider-Ock is sleeping with Mary Jane which is some form of rape if you give it an even cursory glance. So, thank you Marvel and writer Dan Slott for being creepy. Ew.)
Monday, January 7, 2013
Amanda (Not Her Real Name), Part 2
Christmas Eve, 2009
I go to pick up someone I haven't seen in ages. Someone whom I've kept secret from everyone, because I don't know how to explain a lifelong relationship with someone I've only met a few times more than twice and reads me like her favorite book. She comes out of the train station and her overnight bag follows behind her like a dog. She weaves through people while walking next to me, we say nearly nothing. Shes a head shorter, with big brown eyes and the kind of pleading look photographers wish they could get for those ads for starving orphans in forgotten countries. She has small features like people have when you're 15 but she was a couple years short of thirty. Beautiful. Slight. Just enough curves to make most other women check themselves in the mirror.
She tells me about her new life with her boyfriend and her dog and how she doesn't want to see her family on Christmas and her job and how everything has been in the last couple of years. I sit in my car, intimidated as I have nothing to say. I live by myself, I work, I have a couple friends and one or two closer ones. There is no way to talk about anything when days pass one into the next, the details lost to boredom and not caring what day of the week it is. Details die quickly if not looked after.
I take one hand off the steering wheel and go to touch her on the nose. Stupid, strange habit I have with women I'm affectionate towards. She backs away quickly, like a dog who's tail had been stepped on and her eyes huge behind the black rimmed glasses. The look is somehow a mix of fear and wonder.
"No, don't."
I put my hand back on the wheel and my attention back on the street. The people pay no attention to me, but for some reason I have to be aware of them all as they move from place to place even if I will never see this faceless mass ever again, "Why not?"
"Because!" using a conjunction like a child would. She curls forward, her hair bouncing off the purple-blue sweater and she relaxes for the first time though she doesn't take her eyes off me. Her eyebrows are arched now, overemphasized like showing a complete stranger as much earnest sympathy she can muster. She told me things she said she never told anyone else. I've known her for four years, she still treats me like a stranger.
Shoppers move in waves from store to storefront to sidewalk kiosk for last minute gifts. The cars lining the street are choked with the shit-brown snow. Traffic spits dirty water at the passersby. Its as if the city hates the people that live in it. It gives them ugly colors and bad weather and rude people as if to tell people to get out. I feel very welcome in this, I am only lonely around other people.
She makes an odd movement, and she tries to cover up her reaching out for my arm by playing with the fabric on her sleeve. She fidgets and twists and squirms in the seat next to me. When we walk around town, she takes the crook my arm as we cross the street and keeps up half a pace behind me. She becomes warmer, laughing, less like a stranger and more like a gentle shadow of misspent age.
I think about running my hands through her hair and stop myself because of those brown eyes. She accepts a hug willingly but doesn't put her arms out, its all in her eyes. And She gets nervous when she walks up next to me in the college bookstore. She smells like a warm fireplace.
I pull into her parent's house later and she excuses herself for not inviting me in. It would be confusing and they're old world strict despite her personal liberal ways. She doesn't get out. She finds six minutes of excuses to stay, wringing her hands, explaining little random details excitedly - her family's Christmas habits, the music CD she burned for me, where she got the sweater, a story about her dog. She eventually stops herself, takes her bag and tells me not to look at her walk in as I drive off.
I do anyway. She's standing at the front door, looking back into my rear view mirror. The text messages on Christmas start off around five o'clock with "I miss you" and continue on well into the night.
I go to pick up someone I haven't seen in ages. Someone whom I've kept secret from everyone, because I don't know how to explain a lifelong relationship with someone I've only met a few times more than twice and reads me like her favorite book. She comes out of the train station and her overnight bag follows behind her like a dog. She weaves through people while walking next to me, we say nearly nothing. Shes a head shorter, with big brown eyes and the kind of pleading look photographers wish they could get for those ads for starving orphans in forgotten countries. She has small features like people have when you're 15 but she was a couple years short of thirty. Beautiful. Slight. Just enough curves to make most other women check themselves in the mirror.
She tells me about her new life with her boyfriend and her dog and how she doesn't want to see her family on Christmas and her job and how everything has been in the last couple of years. I sit in my car, intimidated as I have nothing to say. I live by myself, I work, I have a couple friends and one or two closer ones. There is no way to talk about anything when days pass one into the next, the details lost to boredom and not caring what day of the week it is. Details die quickly if not looked after.
I take one hand off the steering wheel and go to touch her on the nose. Stupid, strange habit I have with women I'm affectionate towards. She backs away quickly, like a dog who's tail had been stepped on and her eyes huge behind the black rimmed glasses. The look is somehow a mix of fear and wonder.
"No, don't."
I put my hand back on the wheel and my attention back on the street. The people pay no attention to me, but for some reason I have to be aware of them all as they move from place to place even if I will never see this faceless mass ever again, "Why not?"
"Because!" using a conjunction like a child would. She curls forward, her hair bouncing off the purple-blue sweater and she relaxes for the first time though she doesn't take her eyes off me. Her eyebrows are arched now, overemphasized like showing a complete stranger as much earnest sympathy she can muster. She told me things she said she never told anyone else. I've known her for four years, she still treats me like a stranger.
Shoppers move in waves from store to storefront to sidewalk kiosk for last minute gifts. The cars lining the street are choked with the shit-brown snow. Traffic spits dirty water at the passersby. Its as if the city hates the people that live in it. It gives them ugly colors and bad weather and rude people as if to tell people to get out. I feel very welcome in this, I am only lonely around other people.
She makes an odd movement, and she tries to cover up her reaching out for my arm by playing with the fabric on her sleeve. She fidgets and twists and squirms in the seat next to me. When we walk around town, she takes the crook my arm as we cross the street and keeps up half a pace behind me. She becomes warmer, laughing, less like a stranger and more like a gentle shadow of misspent age.
I think about running my hands through her hair and stop myself because of those brown eyes. She accepts a hug willingly but doesn't put her arms out, its all in her eyes. And She gets nervous when she walks up next to me in the college bookstore. She smells like a warm fireplace.
I pull into her parent's house later and she excuses herself for not inviting me in. It would be confusing and they're old world strict despite her personal liberal ways. She doesn't get out. She finds six minutes of excuses to stay, wringing her hands, explaining little random details excitedly - her family's Christmas habits, the music CD she burned for me, where she got the sweater, a story about her dog. She eventually stops herself, takes her bag and tells me not to look at her walk in as I drive off.
I do anyway. She's standing at the front door, looking back into my rear view mirror. The text messages on Christmas start off around five o'clock with "I miss you" and continue on well into the night.
Friday, January 4, 2013
Dear Neil Gaiman, Shut Up Already
Let me be frank about something so we can cut to the meat of things, skipping the filling potatoes or the opening appetizers. I do not like Neil Gaiman. I never have. His material is middling and often "fantasy lite", something like a step up from JK Rowling and thirty flights down from a Susan Cooper, Ursula Le Guin or Robert E Howard. He is much like Tim Burton: they're all wallpaper and little framework.
Now, thats not to say that people who like them are idiots. You can certainly like something (good OR bad) of your own volition and thats fine. But what is important is liking something for what it is and not building it up to something that it isn't.
Gaiman doesn't really present anything new. To his credit, new ideas are very, very tough and not many authors do them with any sort of frequency. I'm sure he doesn't sit down at his typewriter and wonder what storylines he can swipe from something else. However, he has a fanbase where people worship him as some kind of writing deity that speaks to their souls. That may speak more to his fanbase than his writing but all the same, he is known for his work and its not anything anyone makes it out to be. Enjoyable? Yes. Meaningful? Ehhhhhh...
Last week, Neil gave a well-meaning commencement speech at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. You can read the whole thing on the Huffington Post. Part of that speech contained the following:
Whats most frustrating about this is that his words have very good intentions. "Where you see cynicism, add optimism" and so forth. That is a good message and one that, if he worded it so, I'd applaud him for (as an ever-fighting cynic myself). The problem is, he tells people to "make art".
Yes, Neil, I'll go out into the world and do just that.
The thing is "art is hard" (as Harlan Ellison put it, somehow not swearing in a sentence), and that most people don't have the talent for it, nor do they know what "good" art is. I'm not saying what you "like", which is a subjective concept, I'm talking about "good" which is an entirely different meaning. Good art is a deft hand, a long time working at the skill, an incredible wealth of innate talent and - get this - a lot of fucking failure beforehand. Art is probably the most sacrificial thing a person can do short of throwing their life down to help another person. Art is the greatest creative act as its a person throwing himself out in the world and saying "Here I am". There is also a uniform acknowledgement behind the person's material: you may not like Andy Warhol's output but he's acknowledged for his original ideas and craftwork.
Art is probably the most difficult thing in the world. Most people who are identified as artists are there more as a job but not for art its self. These are talented, hardworking people who deserve our respect for being able to do what they do - but are they artists? The fact that there is a word that can now just as easily lump Rob Liefeld in with Pablo Picasso or The Lourve and Banksy shows that people often don't get the difference - and if I have to tell you why two of those things are not art, please never talk to me again.
In the end, as well intentioned as his speech was, Gaiman just doesn't fucking get it. At his age and with his mindset, I don't think he ever will either. If art is so easy to make, then it would have very little value - which is sort of why American culture has been a quagmire of worthless shit for decades. Michael Bay (not an artist) makes movies that are slam-bang shoot-em-ups with no lasting value while Terrence Malick makes sweeping, difficult movies that are meant to be felt instead of understood and... well, you know which sort HE is.
We have beaten the definition of "art" and "artist" until it is a flat, meaningless word. Art is not about the output an artist makes, it is about the intention of expression of a human being to another in an abstraction like music, photography, painting, sketching, cinema or other mediums. But because you can throw some paint on a canvas or you got a degree in film studies or you can explain Dadaism to your community college friends, people presume you are an artist. No, you can be many things - likely you are either an ankle-deep intellectual or someone who uses "tools" - but you aren't an artist.
Here is a rough litmus test:
Does your output express something greater than yourself?
Is what you're doing something to better or improve the world around you?
Are you attempting - or are you simply illustrating / composing / typing / etc?
Now, if you're just writing or doodling or whatever, I will never, ever look down on you for it. You're probably better at it than I am. I probably admire you for your talents but ... no, you're probably not an artist either. I know a very few handful of people in 31 years who actually qualify for that - my friend Michelle does painting and sketching and it is probably her first, best form of expression - she is an artist. But thats rare. Because good art is rare. And rarity means it should be appreciated, not demanded of or conjoled at a formal university gathering. Art does not come from that sort of place.
Here is a much better mentality than anything Gaiman said. In a written letter, film director John Hughes wrote to his penpal Alison Byrne Fields saying...
Do not do it for art. You're not that person. And neither is Neil Gaiman.
Be that someone who writes, not types.
Now, thats not to say that people who like them are idiots. You can certainly like something (good OR bad) of your own volition and thats fine. But what is important is liking something for what it is and not building it up to something that it isn't.
Gaiman doesn't really present anything new. To his credit, new ideas are very, very tough and not many authors do them with any sort of frequency. I'm sure he doesn't sit down at his typewriter and wonder what storylines he can swipe from something else. However, he has a fanbase where people worship him as some kind of writing deity that speaks to their souls. That may speak more to his fanbase than his writing but all the same, he is known for his work and its not anything anyone makes it out to be. Enjoyable? Yes. Meaningful? Ehhhhhh...
Last week, Neil gave a well-meaning commencement speech at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. You can read the whole thing on the Huffington Post. Part of that speech contained the following:
When things get tough, this is what you should do: Make good art. I'm serious. Husband runs off with a politician -- make good art. Leg crushed and then eaten by a mutated boa constrictor -- make good art. IRS on your trail -- make good art. Cat exploded -- make good art. Someone on the Internet thinks what you're doing is stupid or evil or it's all been done before -- make good art.No, Neil, thats not how art works.
Whats most frustrating about this is that his words have very good intentions. "Where you see cynicism, add optimism" and so forth. That is a good message and one that, if he worded it so, I'd applaud him for (as an ever-fighting cynic myself). The problem is, he tells people to "make art".
Yes, Neil, I'll go out into the world and do just that.
The thing is "art is hard" (as Harlan Ellison put it, somehow not swearing in a sentence), and that most people don't have the talent for it, nor do they know what "good" art is. I'm not saying what you "like", which is a subjective concept, I'm talking about "good" which is an entirely different meaning. Good art is a deft hand, a long time working at the skill, an incredible wealth of innate talent and - get this - a lot of fucking failure beforehand. Art is probably the most sacrificial thing a person can do short of throwing their life down to help another person. Art is the greatest creative act as its a person throwing himself out in the world and saying "Here I am". There is also a uniform acknowledgement behind the person's material: you may not like Andy Warhol's output but he's acknowledged for his original ideas and craftwork.
Art is probably the most difficult thing in the world. Most people who are identified as artists are there more as a job but not for art its self. These are talented, hardworking people who deserve our respect for being able to do what they do - but are they artists? The fact that there is a word that can now just as easily lump Rob Liefeld in with Pablo Picasso or The Lourve and Banksy shows that people often don't get the difference - and if I have to tell you why two of those things are not art, please never talk to me again.
In the end, as well intentioned as his speech was, Gaiman just doesn't fucking get it. At his age and with his mindset, I don't think he ever will either. If art is so easy to make, then it would have very little value - which is sort of why American culture has been a quagmire of worthless shit for decades. Michael Bay (not an artist) makes movies that are slam-bang shoot-em-ups with no lasting value while Terrence Malick makes sweeping, difficult movies that are meant to be felt instead of understood and... well, you know which sort HE is.
We have beaten the definition of "art" and "artist" until it is a flat, meaningless word. Art is not about the output an artist makes, it is about the intention of expression of a human being to another in an abstraction like music, photography, painting, sketching, cinema or other mediums. But because you can throw some paint on a canvas or you got a degree in film studies or you can explain Dadaism to your community college friends, people presume you are an artist. No, you can be many things - likely you are either an ankle-deep intellectual or someone who uses "tools" - but you aren't an artist.
Here is a rough litmus test:
Does your output express something greater than yourself?
Is what you're doing something to better or improve the world around you?
Are you attempting - or are you simply illustrating / composing / typing / etc?
Now, if you're just writing or doodling or whatever, I will never, ever look down on you for it. You're probably better at it than I am. I probably admire you for your talents but ... no, you're probably not an artist either. I know a very few handful of people in 31 years who actually qualify for that - my friend Michelle does painting and sketching and it is probably her first, best form of expression - she is an artist. But thats rare. Because good art is rare. And rarity means it should be appreciated, not demanded of or conjoled at a formal university gathering. Art does not come from that sort of place.
Here is a much better mentality than anything Gaiman said. In a written letter, film director John Hughes wrote to his penpal Alison Byrne Fields saying...
"Do you like the way you write? Please yourself. I'm rather fond of writing. I actually regard it as fun. Do it frequently and see if you can't find the fun in it that I do." http://wellknowwhenwegetthere.blogspot.com/2009/08/sincerely-john-hughes.htmlNow thats a good suggestion. Do it for the sake of doing it. Do it for yourself. Do it for pleasure, do it for self-expression, do it to be understood (and alternately, do it so you understand yourself better).
Do not do it for art. You're not that person. And neither is Neil Gaiman.
Be that someone who writes, not types.
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