The Other People

I look at all the Other People. The Other People are the People we rarely notice, the People who were designed to go unnoticed. The People that actually make sure things work, but invisibly. The People you aren't supposed to meet face-to-face, but you sometimes do anyway. That small old man with the push broom at the fancy hotel, for example. I look at him, and I want to say hello. Do not mistake, I don't want to say thanks -- not a cursory, socially-obligated thanks, anyway. I want to say hello. I want to ask him his name. You see, he doesn't get a name-tag like the lady at the front desk. I want to let him know that he shouldn't act like he's supposed to be invisible. I want to tell him to go trip patrons with his broom. Go sweep right next to the front door, not when the lobby's empty, but when it's full. Go under tables that are being occupied. Take the gold-gilded elevator like everyone else, not the cold concrete stairs. Say hello to people as they pass, don't hang your hand and grip your broom. Why? Because I look at all the Other People. And they don't belong in the woods. They belong in town, like everybody else. All the People. Laughing.

Plano, Texas

I live in Plano, Texas.

Plano is bigger than Jersey City, New Jersey (the second-largest city in NJ behind Newark); Lincoln, Nebraska; Greensboro, North Carolina; Norfolk, Virginia; Birmingham, Alabama; Madison, Wisconsin; Orlando, Florida; Rochester, New York; and Reno, Nevada.

Plano is over 78% white. Next are Asians and Latinos at 10% each. Black people are around 5%. These numbers add up to more than 100%, because about 3% reported two or more races.

Plano is the highest income place in the United States for cities over 130,000 people. It also has the lowest poverty rate of 6.3%, making it the richest city in the United States with a population over 250,000. Plano is also located in Collin County, the richest county in Texas and part of the richest 1% of counties in the United States. The four wealthy zip codes of Plano that contribute to the county's affluence are (in descending order of median household income/year): 75093, 75024, 75025, and 75094. I live in 75025.

64.3% of households are married couples living together.

Plano is also home to many large corporate headquarters, including Electronic Data Systems, JCPenney, Cadbury Schweppes/Dr. Pepper/Seven Up, Frito Lay, and Neiman Marcus.

Plano students achieved notoriety following a cluster of nine suicides in 1983 that raised national awareness about suburban teenage depression and drug abuse. The drug specifically cited by many was heroin. This heroin problem resurfaced in the late 1990s, culminating in coverage by several major news outlets such as NBC's Dateline. Heroin use in Plano eventually led to over a dozen overdose deaths of teenagers and young adults. Many more Plano heroin users suffered from overdoses that did not result in death.

I live in Plano, Texas, but I will never be from here.

Love

Love, love, love
All you need is love
She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah
Love is all you nee--
Love is all you nee--
Love is all you nee--
Love is all you need
Back on top in June
I said THAT'S LIFE!
I want to hold your hand
With a love like that
You know it can't be bad
Yeah, yeah, yeah
Oh, yeah, I tell you something
It's easy!

Top 10 Albums of 2006

I haven't listened to a lot of albums I should have this year, so any objections to this list are probably correct. However, this list does accurately reflect the soundtrack of my life in 2006, which is all any year-end top 10 list is good for, anyway.

10. Straight Outta Lynwood ("Weird Al" Yankovic)
9. Modern Times (Bob Dylan)
8. LOVE (The Beatles)
7. Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not (Arctic Monkeys)
6. At War with the Mystics (The Flaming Lips)
5. The Crane Wife (The Decemberists)
4. Destroyer's Rubies (Destroyer)
3. Everything All the Time (Band of Horses)
2. We are the Pipettes (The Pipettes)
1. The Life Pursuit (Belle & Sebastian)

And, uh, also the Top 2 Concerts of 2006:

2. The Raconteurs/Bob Dylan
1. The New Pornographers/Belle & Sebastian

And, uh, also the Top 1 Festival of 2006:

1. Pitchfork - Union Park, Chicago

2006 was a pretty good year for music!

The Character of HAL 9000

This is the third installment of a multi-part series in which I post the best college papers ever written in the entire history of the universe... by me. Voila!

I. Introduction/Disclaimer

The difficulties that arise from examining the “character” of HAL 9000, or any other element of the narrative in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, are hazardous and abundant. 2001 is a film whose plot is constructed in a deliberately opaque manner, defying most, if not all, of the classical Hollywood conventions. Temporally, it “spans infinity rather than days or years”; spatially, it “embodies a kind of ultimate cinematic universe” without the assurances of a “normal perspective”; in short, it is a “frontal assault on the traditional conventions of Hollywood filmmaking” (Nelson 110). Out of 160 minutes of film, only 40 minutes of footage contain dialogue, most of which does little to further the audience’s understanding of the story (Fry 333). Kubrick himself stated that he “intended the film to be an intensely subjective experience that reaches the viewer at an inner level of consciousness, just as music does; to ‘explain’ a Beethoven symphony would be to emasculate it by erecting an artificial barrier between conception and appreciation” (Fry 333). Basically, Kubrick never meant for this story to be put into words, never meant it to be explained, verbalized, or articulated; rather, he meant it to be experienced, seen visually and heard musically, and only inwardly appreciated.

Indeed, this poses a problem in trying to pin down anything coherent about a purposefully enigmatic narrative in twelve pages, but despite this challenge, an attempt will be made to elucidate the narrative function of the HAL 9000 character.

II. Introduction/Thesis

Philosophers, scientists, theists, and atheists throughout human history have spent their entire lives musing on the eternal question, “Why?” Why man? Why earth? Why the universe? Why anything? It is this self-consciousness, perhaps, that separates us from any other living thing known to mankind -- it is, perhaps, the only thing that makes us special. If this is true, then what does one make of an artificially created conscious, invented and molded by the hands of man, HAL 9000? Most viewers of the film agree that HAL is more than just an action prop with an electronic voice, more than just a machine; he (not it) is a full-fledged character in the narrative. But as the pinnacle of man’s creativity and technological achievement, what kind of character is he? How human is he? Is he a hero or villain?

On a smaller, more literal level, HAL is unquestionably human, and perhaps a tragic villain in the vein of Mary Shelley’s monster in Frankenstein. However, as a symbol for what technology means in relation to man, and as the pinnacle of what technology can achieve, a tool that replicates all the complexities of the human mind, HAL 9000 is a character that transcends the question of humanity and the paradigm of good and evil to achieve a more cosmically significant status in the narrative, not as a representation of man’s follies, but as simply another stepping stone to walk over in man’s evolution.

III. HAL’s Humanity

Even before HAL 9000 ever enters the narrative, the notion of latent humanity being buried or constructed within man’s technological creations is explored. Various images or objects suggest the idea that technology, something most people view as cold, mechanical, and inhuman, is actually a very human, even organic thing.

During the “Dawn of Man” section, in fact, the first tool, the first technological idea for man, is a bone, part of something that used to be alive. Bones are something very vital to higher life forms such as mammals, and the fact that the first ape-man uses this object that was once alive as a tool, as a technology, inextricably ties life and technology together, from technology’s very birth onward. The notion that technology is also tied to death, by way of violence, is also suggested by the use of a dead bone from a dead animal, but this idea will be explored more thoroughly later in the paper.

This idea doesn’t die when the technologies become more complex, as the famous match cut that brings us from bone to space ship suggests. Ships float through space elegantly, enhanced by the classical music soundtrack, and their graceful movements seem to have a life of their own. The spaceships movements have been described by others as anywhere from “ballet” to “a cosmic, coital dance,” and regardless of one’s interpretation, they are all human descriptions, and certainly not simple mechanical motions (Verniere 2). One particular spaceship, in fact, is a round, planet-like sphere, which we see descending into a station; it looks exactly like a human head, complete with lights for eyes. Clearly in this shot, the face of technology is human.

When the film reaches the “Jupiter Mission” section, and we are introduced to HAL 9000 for the first time, we see just exactly how human that face is. The face is actually just one big red luminous circle, like an unblinking eye that watches everything. HAL’s “eye” seems almost more human than the human crew’s eyes; the three in hibernation are virtually frozen dead bodies that don’t even get to participate in the distinctly human activity of dreaming, and the two conscious ones, Dave Bowman and Frank Poole, have extremely expressionless, blank, robotic faces, with dull eyes that do not shine with nearly as much life and vitality as HAL’s red light.

During a BBC interview with the two astronauts, much is revealed about how human HAL actually is. We are told by the interviewer, “The crew of Discovery 1 consists of five men and one of the latest generation of the HAL 9000 computers,” and it is interesting that he is even considered a component of the crew, normally understood to be a human grouping; indeed, he is more part of the “crew” of the ship than any one human, as he runs every aspect of ship operations. One particular shot from the interview frames the two astronauts side by side, with HAL right in the middle between them, as if he were not just part of the crew, but captain of the crew. In fact, it is interesting that he is even referred to as “he” at all, instead of “it.” HAL’s humanity is so inherently intuitive, that it is basically automatic to assume to call him a “he,” and not once is he ever referred to as “it.” Even when you call him by his name, you are supposed to say “Hal,” like the human name, and not say the letters “H-A-L.”

Granted, the question arises as to whether HAL can actually feel real human emotions, if he indeed is actually a replication, not just a synthetic mimicry, of the human brain. However, even in the content and manner in which HAL speaks, there seems to be a whole well full of motivations derived from truly human emotions. He states, “I enjoy working with people,” a response grounded by emotion (“enjoy”) rather than logic or mechanics. After Frank views a birthday message from his family, HAL chimes in with a, “Happy birthday, Frank,” which seems to come out of nowhere, completely unmotivated, and therefore unusually genuine. When HAL tries to persuade Dave that there’s nothing wrong, even after HAL has murdered Frank, he tries to appeal to Dave on a basic human level, citing distinctly human traits when he says, “I’ve still got the greatest enthusiasm and confidence in the mission.” Also, it’s noteworthy that he says “still got,” as if he’s lost everything else -- the logic, the computational abilities, the rationality -- and all that’s left deep down, at his core, is his inherent humanity, his “enthusiasm and confidence.” Even if phrases like that are just well-calculated moves to get Dave to stop his attempt at dismantling him, they reveal a deep, urgent need for self preservation that goes beyond the programmed parameters of completing this mission.

Finally, if HAL’s positive attributes do not point to his humanity, then the manner in which he contrasts with “real humans” certainly does. The “banality of Bowman and Poole… makes it possible for HAL… to appear… ‘more human than human’” (Verniere 3). HAL’s closest human analog would be Mission Control based on earth, and the difference between them is overt. Although Mission Control is a human speaking to Dave and Frank, the voice is filtered through radio technology, and sounds much flatter, thinner, and more electrical than HAL’s voice, which has an enveloping, deeply resonant tone. The content of their speech also differs. HAL speaks like a normal human being as he “gives counsel, shows curiosity, awards praise” (Nelson 186). Mission Control speaks in “Technish” that sounds infinitely more like the speech of a computer or machine: “X-ray-Delta-One, this is Mission Control, roger your two-zero-one-three… Roger your plan to go E-V-A and replace Alpha-Echo-three-five unit prior to failure” (Nelson 318).

IV. HAL as Tragic Villain

If HAL is indeed established to be, if not downright human, then virtually human, what kind of character does he have? What sort of human is he? The most common and immediate reaction is that he is an evil, intelligent, calculating villain. The American Film Institute listed him as the #13 villain in their “100 Years… 100 Heroes and Villains” best-of list in 2003. His voice has been described as “bland, neutral, reassuring,” but also “ambiguous, sinister, untrustworthy” (Walker 185). His actions, strictly speaking, are certainly heinous, as he murders Frank Poole in cold blood, as well as the helpless, hibernating crew members, before intentionally leaving Dave outside the ship to die. However, is this distinction so easy? Certainly, HAL’s actions are unforgivable in a sense, but there are complexities to the straight-villain claim that texture HAL’s character as more of the tragic villain type than the purely evil villain type.

First and foremost, HAL was created by man and given the gift of some form of intelligence, and in fact, consciousness. In this sense, he is a pretty clear descendent of the Frankensteinian monsters of which Mary Shelley first gave seminal vision (Kozlovic 347). These types of villains are indelibly tragic, as they were created without ever asking to be created, and always with some sort of fatal flaw that seems like a gross oversight on the part of the creator that causes the monster to suffer in some unjust way. This notion goes as far back as God’s creation of Adam only to have him expelled from Eden, as explored by John Milton in Paradise Lost, and thus suggests something inherently human about these tragic Frankensteinian monsters.

HAL’s tragic flaw, in a sense, is that he is too human. The programmers who created him did too good of a job in turning this machine into a man, full of human flaws, especially hubris. The interviewer remarks that he can detect a small bit of pride, even arrogance, in HAL’s proclamations of the 9000 series computers’ infallibility. It has been said that “HAL’s biggest crime” was not his “murderous deeds,” but his “conceit” with “claims like, ‘No 9000 computer has ever made a mistake.’ This is more than just arrogant, more than just false; it is the antithesis of realism” (Kozlovic 358). Indeed, it is this hubris that drives him to commit his villainous murders, either to cover up the possible mistake he made about the faulty part, or as a consequence of his doubts and suspicions about the mission, in which case, his hubris extends to the idea that he, as the most powerful and knowledgeable component of the mission, is above the mission. And the tragedy of that is that this was the way he was created; he was designed to be that powerful and that knowledgeable, that perfect, and in an imperfect world, this was the most cruel thing man ever did to machine -- to give it consciousness without the natural human limitations we have that rein in our arrogances every day. Another take on this idea states that “once programmed to be ‘human,’ HAL loses the machine purity that, no doubt, his Earth twin still possesses. He becomes imbued with a consciousness of his own autonomy and denies his function as a tool,” thereby compromising his “infallibility as a machine and benevolence as a deity” (Nelson 128).

The camera also provides viewers with more subjective viewpoints that underline a certain amount of empathy for HAL. The first shot of HAL we see shows the red circular eye apparently watching Poole shadowboxing around the ship. HAL’s electronic gaze, as it reflects the moving, exercising body of Poole, gives the impression that HAL is jealous of Poole’s movement, his body, his physical manifestation. HAL is only the brain and central nervous system of the ship, an electronic, digital manifestation with no body whatsoever. This, too, was part of his design, fairly or unfairly, and may have mixed dangerously with his arrogance. In any case, the viewer sees both Poole’s limitless potential for movement and action reflected in the glassy eye of HAL’s digitally tied down brain, a mind held prisoner within motionless, muscle-less circuit boards, and can feel a small bit of empathy for this brilliant, intelligent, trapped mind. In fact, “many of the images of Bowman and Poole at work are subjective camera shots from HAL’s various vantage points throughout the spaceship” (Rasmussen 83). When Dave and Frank plot to disconnect HAL, Kubrick

frames the two astronauts, facing each other, inside the oval window of a space pod, where they have retreated so as to discuss HAL’s irrational behavior without, they believe, having the computer overhear them. We see their lips move silently behind the armored glass. The shot is from HAL’s point of view; and we realize the computer is lip-reading Bowman and Poole! (Walker 187)

Knowing that they are discussing what more or less comes down to HAL’s murder, the camera pans back and forth between Dave and Frank’s lips in a panicked motion, indicating HAL’s fear of being disconnected. These point of view shots from HAL’s electronic eyes are what some have called “his distorted, subjective point of view” (Nelson 127). Thus, HAL’s pre-emptive murders are a product of survival instincts and a desire for self-preservation. Indeed, when he wields the pod to cut Frank’s oxygen tube and kill him, it becomes like “his bone club, wielded against the creator who threatens his existence” (Rasmussen 89). HAL can only be blamed insofar as his creators can be blamed for his violent acts. His limitations are man’s limitations, and thus, there must be a certain level of empathy for HAL’s confusions and flaws.

When HAL is finally being dismantled, he reveals eerily human traits. His pleas for Dave to stop are chilling and pathetic as he delivers in monotone, “Stop, Dave. I’m afraid. I’m afraid, Dave.” He keeps going back to feelings and emotions, even as those programmed features are supposedly being removed one by one by Dave: “My mind is going. I can feel it. I can feel it. My mind is going. There is no question about it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I’m a… fraid.” He then does a very human thing near death, which is to revert back to his own infancy, in a moment much like his entire life flashing before his eyes, as he introduces himself and asks if Dave would like to hear a song his instructor taught him when he first became operational. In a sign of shared empathy or humanity, Dave significantly speaks for the first time during this gruesome operation, telling HAL to sing the song, as if to distract HAL from the pain of death. This moment is so poignant, and points to even Dave’s recognition of his own sympathy for HAL, that HAL’s death, despite his own deeds, becomes that of a truly tragic villain.

V. HAL Beyond the Infinite

Beyond just being a pivotal character in the narrative, whether human or non-human, tragic or evil, HAL also transcends these common paradigms of character to play a more cosmically important role as the stepping stone of man from dawn to maturity. This take on HAL acknowledges what is impossible to ignore: that 2001 as a whole is a film that begins before time, reveals the universe and even existence itself coming into existence, and then relates the history of man’s evolutionary development, from ape-man to some future transcendent stage as a Star Child. HAL merely represents the final step in this transformative process.

To begin with, critics commonly structure the film into four major sections, three of them subtitled by Kubrick:

1. The Dawn of Man
• A primeval ape man makes a breakthrough - becoming endowed with intelligence after experiencing a mysterious black monolith
2. The lunar journey in the year 2000 (untitled)
• Eons later, a similar monolith is discovered on the lunar surface in the 21st century, sending its signals to Jupiter
3. Jupiter Mission, 18 Months Later
• A futuristic, 18-month journey to Jupiter, featuring HAL 9000
4. Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite
• A mystical experience in another time and dimension (Dirks)

The separation between “The Dawn of Man” section and the untitled lunar journey is often thought to be obvious, as it is marked by the famous match cut from bone to spaceship, a cut that spans eons of time and countless technological improvements and discoveries. When the audience sees the cut, the “illusion of progress encourages us to accept this shift with little resistance,” but it is more interesting (and more correct) to assume that Kubrick chose to not separate the lunar journey segment with a subtitle for a reason, that it should actually be included as a continuation of “The Dawn of Man” (Castle). The evidence for this view is strong, as this longer dawn is marked by “two signposts” on the perimeter:

the monoliths. One has been placed in the ape’s encampment; the other, buried on the moon. Man’s ‘dawn’ has occurred not in a single bound to a smarter ape but within the whole space of four million years. This time marks a prelude to the journey to Jupiter, which will change man’s relation to the technological universe (Castle).

In other words, the entire first section introduces man as he develops pathetically through the utilization of technology, tied inextricably to the capacity for violence. The entire second section, centered around HAL, is the turning point, in which the culmination and pinnacle of what technology can achieve ultimately proves to be nothing more than a bigger, fancier expression of man’s capacity for technologically enabled violence. It is the last, final moment of apes bludgeoning themselves with levers, after which, in the third and final act, man is reborn into a higher form, beyond technology, and therefore, optimistically, beyond violence.

Exploring this grand, beginning-of-time-until-the-end-of-man narrative structure of the film would involve several papers’ worth of ideas, so this paper will focus on the middle section, HAL’s section, as a transitional “birthing period” for the emergence of this “new” man. This perspective simply underlines the point that HAL is not a mere character in this story, but, as the culmination of current man’s limitations vis-à-vis his dependence on technology vis-à-vis expressions of violence, overcoming and moving beyond HAL is an evolutionary step in the process of reaching the Star Child.

Images involving the process of birth abound in this section. The very first shot is of the Discovery 1 spaceship, which is shaped very much like a sperm cell, with a large head in front and a long, thin tail with rocket boosters in the back powering the ship’s movement. Indeed, this mission is very much like a sperm swimming through space, looking for a cosmic ovum to conceive a “new man” with. At this point, HAL is working on the ship in conjunction with, not against, this goal.

However, it is when HAL turns on humans that he actually truly propels them forward, pushing Dave to the next level, forcing him to overcome the still dawning man’s vestigial reliance on technology, to transcend that limiting human trait and evolve into a superior state. Humans “retain more immature traits longer than any other vertebrate on the planet” (Westfahl 103), and technology has simply been one of those immature traits that have endured over man’s four billion year long dawning, and now must be shed on the way to greater biological glory.

The sex-and-birth-related imagery continues to enhance the showdown between Dave and HAL, between man and his own technology. When Dave finds himself inside a pod, without a space helmet, locked outside of the spaceship by HAL, there seems to be no escape, and HAL seems to have triumphed in stifling -- suffocating -- man’s evolution. However, in a triumph of distinctly human ingenuity over mechanical logic, Dave forces his own re-entry into Discovery 1 with explosive bolts from his little pod, bolts which “were originally designed to help astronauts escape out of a malfunctioning pod, not into a malfunctioning Discovery” (Rasmussen 96). Dave sets the emergency bolts ready to explode the door open, and kneels down in front of it, crouching in a fetal-like position before shutting his eyes, looking for all the world like a baby preparing to enter the birth canal. The shots of his forced re-entry are more like a rape. His body bursts into the blood red air chamber, a womb, along with a cloud of white, semen-like smoke. After this moment, a reborn Dave stalks through the ship towards the room that houses HAL’s brain, “tracked by a hand-held camera attuned to his erratic breathing,” the film now fully taking on an unstable, but human perspective, the perspective of the victor. Before this, the camera moved in controlled, mechanical pans or simply remained stationary, implicitly assuming the perspective of a machine-dominated world. This victory, then, becomes a validation of man over machine, anointing and signaling his rebirth as he enters HAL’s Logic Memory Center and unscrews his brain-cards, and overtaking control.

HAL’s “death” climaxes the film’s treatment of humanity as Tool-Maker and provides a necessary step toward the symbolic implications of […] the birth of the Star Child. Visually, […] the use of subjective camera devices and disorienting angles signifies the presence of an important internal struggle. Images of circles and corridors convert the interior of Discovery into a well-lit womb of death where hibernators are aborted, and one character, from the darkness of space, gains re-entry to destroy the tool […] and begin a new evolutionary cycle” (Nelson 123).

HAL, for all his humanity or inhumanity, for all his tragedy or evil, was thus a necessity, because “HAL’s ‘humanity’ (his madness) forces Bowman to rediscover his own,” ultimately “[stimulating] growth” (Nelson 142). Put another way, technology’s flaws of inherent violence thus force man to rediscover a new humanity, and a new path of higher consciousness.

VI. Conclusion

Any method of reading Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey becomes reductive or problematic in some way. As one critic put it, “Screwing with audiences’ heads was Stanley Kubrick’s favorite hobby outside of chess” and this film “remains Kubrick’s crowning, confounding achievement” (Verniere 1). HAL himself will always remain a mysterious black box filled with questions, questions about exactly what technology means to man, questions about where the lines are drawn, if any can be, between mimicking and recreating human emotions… questions about the future. In one interesting, small piece of dialogue while Frank and Dave discuss the option of disconnecting HAL, Dave says, “Well, I’m not so sure what he’d think of it.” Neither are we, but the line suggests that “at some emotional level, [he] cares about HAL’s existence” (Nofz 40). Perhaps that is all man can be expected to do -- care about, if not fully comprehend -- the existence and purpose of technology.

A post in which the author attempts to find his inner voice through experimental exploration of his mental space

Must everything begin with "I?" Is this the folly of mankind? But how else to begin, if not with "I?" It's impossible to begin with "We," for instance. "We" requires "I" as a necessary component, or else it becomes "Them." Can one begin with "Them?" This seems no better than beginning with "I." Where to begin, where to begin... In the beginning... in the beginning... First. What comes first? Exposition? No. Too traditional. In the beginning, there was time. Begin with "Now." Yes. Live in The Now, as they say. Not "In the beginning...," but "In the now..."

In the now, time remains still, relatively speaking.
In the now, life lives.
In the now, there is no such thing as a past, or a future.
In the now, the now never has to leave.
In the now, action is impossible.
In the now, there is only existence, existence without action or agency.
In the now, there is nothing.
In the now, nothing burdens.
In the now, a dark room.
In the now, peace.
In the now, eternity.
Now is forever.

december never seemed so strange.

Residue

The wind leaves residues of autumn in my hair,
Like her smile left residues of loneliness.
When I walk and the leaves crunch beneath me,
They say, "Don't forget me! I was beautiful once!"
How does one forget if the weather never fails
To turn my knees and face cold this time of year?
The trees must be so lonely without their hair,
Indeed, how do they carry on, naked and empty?
They await the eternal spring which never comes.
I wait with them -- "I've been through this before."
Where did you go? Where have you gone? Alone?
The earth and the sun have conspired in absence,
My heart grows weary; or, weary grows on it.
For her smile showed me the summer once,
Which I will not forget when the snows come.

life and death

on the blackboard the Professor wrote
"life and death"
death + life
and we talked about vampyres
but i didn't see the point
as long as i am here and he is there
and you are where (?)

so i went looking for {you}
i put on your clothes
time time time = there's never enough
and time time time = it never runs out
you are there as i am here
as he is she and she is he
as you are we and woe is me

but where are we now, john?
where are we?

Unraveling the Detective Myth in Film Noir

This is the second post of a multi-post sequence in which I copy and paste old college papers so that my blog can claim to have more intelligent writing in it. Please revel in the genius. Please...

In earlier fiction, the detective has always been a near mythological character, possessing incredible powers of insight, profound ingenuity, and deductive reasoning. His brains are almost superhuman in the way they are fully able to grasp the universe completely. The classic example of this is Sherlock Holmes, the sure and able protector of the community, possessing a sense of calm confidence, even when things seem too confusing to make sense. His passion for proof and truth allows him to notice details as he reads signs objectively and from afar, decoding the cryptic situation until everything becomes obvious for the reader; yet, throughout, it seems that everything has been obvious to him all along. He goes through his job with aplomb because he just knows that everything in the world is knowable. However, as the upheaval of the first half of the twentieth century came to a head, with a depression and two world wars, this myth began to unravel into something much more complex and human, and is embodied in what has become known as film noir -- stories about detectives that are marked not by confidence in the world, but by the two major themes of the limits of the knowable and male paranoia/anxiety. As the upheaval of the second half of the century burst, with the Cold War and political and social strife, the detective myth unraveled even further, additionally expressing the limits of the doable. The classic film noir The Maltese Falcon and the neo-noir Chinatown illustrate this point perfectly. While they share these themes in a syntactic sense, however, they do differ semantically in the way these themes are addressed.

Critics often call The Maltese Falcon the first film noir. Written and directed by John Huston before World War II, it exists as one of the more optimistic examples of the genre, although I use that adjective in a completely relative sense. On the surface, the film is about tough, hard-boiled private detective Samuel Spade, who, after the murder of his partner Miles Archer, becomes embroiled in a convoluted plot involving all sorts of criminals, low-lifes, and antique dealers, to secure an extremely valuable and historically mystical and elusive statuette of a falcon. However, taken as a whole, the film is an expression of epistemological uncertainty and male paranoia.

When it comes to the first theme of what is knowable, Spade is no Holmes, nor is the world he moves through the world Holmes moves through. Spade does not -- can not -- solve the mystery by looking at solid clues and physical evidence, trusting in logic and deduction with the certainty of a classic detective, because the world around him is neither solid nor logical. Instead, he must delve right into the shady underworld of the criminal, nearly becoming one himself as he becomes at odds with both the police and the scoundrels in trying to dig up the truth (a true spade, indeed). In becoming so embroiled, rather than maintaining the clinically intellectual objectivity and distance of a Holmes, he in a way admits that everything he concludes can only be his own interpretation, and that this unavoidable subjectivity par involvement, this inability to observe objectively, leaves true holes of mystery that the detective can never be capable of filling in for the audience. Spade is not completely lost in such a world, of course, as he seems to wheel and deal separately with the police and the criminals Brigid O’Shaughnessy, Joel Cairo, Wilmer Cook, and Casper Gutman with a measure of capability. However, the now distinctive technique of low-key lighting almost constantly shrouds Spade’s world in shadow, hiding what truths we may never know. A colleague warns Spade, “You think you always know what you’re doing, but you’re too slick for your own good,” a warning highlighted by the numerous name changes, false identities, lies, and double-crosses he must try to navigate, and not always deftly. Spade is a detective vulnerable and human enough to be drugged by Gutman and to be duped, at least for a while, into falling for O’Shaughnessy. Something like that would never happen to Holmes; indeed, Spade’s world is much more chaotic, and thus difficult to discern. When Cairo and O’Shaughnessy discuss the falcon in front of Spade in his home, revealing their unforeseen familiarity and throwing Spade and the audience for a loop, there is a quick shot of Spade’s shocked face, with a completely dark and shadowed wall behind him -- the ominous and unknowable shadows of the world have even managed to creep into Spade’s own home! Later, Spade explains to Cairo that a “sensible story” told to the police would have landed them in jail; it is a ludicrous story that passes for truth in this world. When Gutman makes a toast to “clear understanding and plain speaking,” the double-crosses only increase. In trying to price the falcon, he says, “There’s no telling how high it could go. That’s the one and only truth about it.” It’s telling that the one and only truth is that nobody knows, and this is a theme in general, not just about the falcon’s worth. Throughout the film, a man named Floyd Thursby is talked about a lot, someone we never even meet or see. In the end, the statuette everyone was clambering for turns out to be fake, and the whereabouts of the real statue remain a mystery. He calls the fake one “the stuff that dreams are made of,” expressing the futility and ethereality of even a hard, solid, physical clue. All these things sum up to indicate an uncertain and unknowable world.

The second theme of male anxiety is also very prominent. The film is composed almost entirely of either interior shots, which create a claustrophobic feeling enhanced by the many shadows, or exterior nighttime shots, marked by ominous darkness -- both point to a certain level of anxiety. When the police accuse Spade of killing Thursby, there is a shot of him in the middle of the frame, an officer towering over him to his left, and another sitting lower than him to his right, thus threateningly trapping Spade in the middle. Of course, the ultimate symbol of male paranoia is his antithesis, the femme fatale, O’Shaughnessy in this film. Spade is constantly watchful of her as she changes names, lies, double-crosses, and eventually admits to killing Archer. Her presence establishes the tradition in film noir that women can’t be trusted, especially rich, beautiful, seductive, and/or helpless ones, and the many scenes with her highlight this point. She never quits what Spade calls her “school-girl act,” yet her affectation of helplessness is often undermined by the way she is filmed. One shot has her standing ominously over a sitting Spade as the window blinds behind her either pierce her with ill-omened lines of death or suggest her criminality as prison bars. Another shot shows the shadows created by the blinds slanting diagonally across the wall, right behind Spade, off-angle lines that destabilize the frame, and menace to destabilize Spade. Her whole hotel room, in fact, is marked by the blinds and striped chairs, a light-dark-light-dark pattern that certainly suggests her duality, and adds to Spade’s male paranoia. Spade, moreover, is constantly rolling his own cigarettes, in an almost ritualistic fashion, ritual being a common male answer to anxiety; additionally, if one sees the cigarette as a phallic symbol, this cigarette rolling can thus be understood as a way of affirming his maleness in the face of the femme fatale threat.

However, Spade is ultimately able to hand in all the criminals and save his own neck, an astonishing feat given all the uncertainty that surrounds him; and although he comes close to falling for O’Shaughnessy’s wiles, he is sensible enough to pragmatically weigh the pros and cons of running away with this dangerous woman, and decides to turn her in. Thus, initially, film noir as a genre dealt with conquerable limits of knowledge, and preventable anxiety. Unfortunately for the private detective, these themes spiraled out of control in revisionist neo-noir films like Roman Polanski’s Chinatown that reread the genre with an even more cynical attitude towards the world.

The plot of Chinatown is even more convoluted than The Maltese Falcon’s, with private detective Jake Gittes starting off spying on supposedly cheating husband Hollis Mulray for a woman who pretends to be suspicious wife Evelyn, and ending with a gigantic, fantastically lucrative water-diversion plot by her the real Evelyn’s father Noah Cross, in which a totally unforeseen incestuous relationship is revealed. In this brief description, one can already begin to see the two themes of epistemological limits and male paranoia emerging.

The structure of the narrative alone addresses the limits of the knowable simply by its convolution and sheer complexity. Every other scene seems to be a plot-point that twists the story in a new direction, and spins Gittes’ head around. He is not nearly as capable as Spade in navigating the labyrinth and discerning truth from falsehood, but it is also a more labyrinthine world Gittes must operate in. A woman pretending to be Mrs. Mulray easily dupes him into spying on Mr. Mulray, making Gittes look like quite a fool. It looks like Mr. Mulray is actually the bad guy at first, and Cross a good guy. Rather than get drugged like Spade, Gittes has his blackout spell when he gets knocked unconscious by angry farmers. When he snoops around enough to gather the key fact that water is mysteriously being diverted and dumped into the ocean in the middle of a big drought, he almost loses his nose (every bit of knowledge comes at a dear price in this world of uncertainty). Like Spade, Gittes, is told by Cross, “You may think you know what you’re dealing with -- but believe me, you don’t.” Just when Gittes and the audience think they have it all neatly figured out, that Evelyn drowned Hollis in the salt water pool in the backyard, based on salt water in his lungs and his glasses found in the pool, Gittes discovers the limits of what he thinks he knows, when the incestuous relationship of Evelyn and Cross is revealed, and that Mulray never wore bifocals -- but this information comes too late, and Gittes tries but fails to save the innocent and bring down the bad guy, instead helping to kill Evelyn and allowing Cross to escape with the big money-plot and the child of incest. (As an aside, the incest theme is interesting because Cross is played by John Huston, the aforementioned writer-director of the first film noir The Maltese Falcon, and so the “father” of film noir. The mere casting of him in Chinatown is thus a form of genre-incest.) Rather than create uncertainty through lighting and shadows, however, the film uses a different set of semantics, mainly ocular/vision/glass and water/drought motifs. Photos deceive the mind. The fish Cross serves Gittes has a glossed eye, representing a clouded vision that can never see the whole picture. Similarly, Evelyn has a flaw in her iris, another sign of flawed vision. Gittes finds broken bifocals at the bottom of the pool, shattered pieces of glass that reflect a duplicitous and fractured world. Evelyn in the end is shot through her eye, a powerful statement on the seen versus unseen. The dryness of the earth caused by the drought suggests a dried up world with little information to offer. When water/information does arrive, it comes in chaotic deluges that almost drown Gittes, not help him. Water is naturally a more destabilized form of matter that flows and crashes with sometimes unstoppable turmoil, and its presence dominates, perhaps even precludes, more “solid” matter. While Spade’s world of shadows could always be conquered by turning on the light, Gittes’ world of water is wilder, nearly drowning him, and never staying still. Thus, it is the imperfect vision and unmanageable water together that suggest, with different semantics, the same syntax as The Maltese Falcon, that the world is not just uncertain, but unknowable.

Male paranoia is also not only present, but severely heightened in the film. As a neo-noir, the audience must instantly suspect the rich, beautiful woman that walks into the office, the femme fatale that poses such a threat to the male psyche, and indeed, Ida Sessions was fooling Gittes. But the great trick that Polanski pulls on us film noir scholars is to set up Evelyn as the femme fatale, where she shows a willingness to play Gittes’ game against the police by lying to them (a similar event happens in The Maltese Falcon), where Gittes handles her lying during a dinner scene, and where he apparently establishes her guilt in a murder, only to knock us all back by revealing that she wasn’t a femme fatale at all, but an innocent victim of incest trying to protect her sister-daughter. He thus toys with the idea of the femme fatale in such a way that it only increases any male paranoia towards women. Whereas before, we could have counted on the woman being evil, now, after Chinatown, who knows? The uncertainty merely aggravates the anxiety. Gittes also can’t affirm his maleness by rolling his own cigarettes; he smokes pre-rolled ones from a case. In fact, the most prominent phallic symbol in this film isn’t an affirmation à la Spade, but something that literally goes under the knife. Gittes walks around half the movie with an awkwardly large white bandage on his nose, because of a knife-cut he gets from a hotheaded gangster. It is interesting that just when he begins to start snooping around and sticking his nose into the darkness, he gets it cut, a sign that the world is so dangerous that it will unman you, even castrate you, if one reads the nose as a phallic symbol. No doubt such a threat would unnerve any man; since castration is a reality, male anxiety and paranoia are brought to their highest possible intensity. Nobody ever went around chopping Spade’s cigarettes with a knife.

The element of castration also adds to a third additional theme of the limits of the doable. Not only can Gittes not really know anything, he can’t really do anything either, as exemplified by the ending of the film and the symbol of Chinatown; in other words, Gittes is impotent, his actions meaningless. He was advised to do “as little as possible” as a cop in Chinatown, and he mutters this phrase as he realizes that his earnest but bungling efforts to save Evelyn only led to her death. As if that wasn’t dark enough, the film suggests that the events are part of an inescapable cycle of karma-like fate. It is revealed that in the shadows of his past, Gittes was somehow responsible for the death of a woman he perhaps loved while he was a cop in Chinatown, which was why he left to become a private detective. At the end of the film, things somehow devolve for Gittes back to Chinatown where another woman that he perhaps loves is killed because of him. It seems that he simply cannot escape this terrible destiny, and it is this point that gives the film its nihilistic drive. As the movie ends, his partner tells him, “Forget it, Jake. It’s Chinatown,” underscoring the inefficacy and impotence in trying to do anything in this world. There is simply nothing Gittes can do; he is powerless against the chaos. To further hammer home this cynicism, Cross is not condemned to a futile pursuit of the dubious “stuff dreams are made of,” as is implied for his counterpart Gutman at the end of The Maltese Falcon. Rather, Cross’ desire is for something else that shares a similar intangible and ethereal quality: the future. And he gets it. A simple glance at a modern map of southern California shows that his plan of bringing L.A. to the valley worked, earning him untold millions. Nobody stops him; he owns the police. Indeed, it seems that in this world of meaningless actions and unknowable uncertainties, money and power are the only things that mean anything -- and so, they mean everything -- in this world. There is nothing like honor that survives here, the way it does in Spade’s world when he is able to avenge his partner’s death, because it’s what you’re “supposed to do.” Instead, you’re supposed to do nothing. With that kind of message, Sherlock Holmes becomes in effect dead.

Thus, film noir, expressing epistemological uncertainty and male paranoia, is a genre that reflects a twentieth-century take on the old detective myth, unraveling it at first with The Maltese Falcon, and eventually killing it completely in Chinatown. Black film, indeed.

Milton's Pride and Humility

This is the first in a multi-part series in which I post past college papers I've written on this blog, because I have nothing creative or new to offer, yet I want to show off how insightful and articulate I am. This particular paper comes from freshman year, so it has its flaws. But at the heart of it, the thesis is a pretty profound understanding of the epic poem. Please don't be alarmed by my genius.

Paradise Lost can be loosely divided into two distinct halves, Books I through VI and Books VII through XII. The first half deals predominantly with the way things were before God created Earth, before the Biblical “six days.” Although Adam, Eve, Eden, and Earth do appear in the first half, they are used primarily as a forum in which Michael can relate to Adam the pre-Earth history of the Universe, i.e. Satan’s rebellion against God, his banishment to Hell, and his subsequent plans, although not in that order. Conversely, the second half of the poem deals almost exclusively with the real action that transpires on Earth, starting with the “six days,” Adam’s recollections of first becoming ontologically aware, and, of course, the tempting of Eve by Satan, man’s subsequent fall and banishment from Paradise, and even, in prophetic vision, Cain and Abel, Noah’s Ark, and Jesus Christ.

Each of these halves has a corresponding invocation in which Milton asks for divine inspiration, and each half has a distinct tone which fittingly introduces its subject matter. In short, the pre-Earth invocation uses very ambitious, boastful, and proud language, announcing its attempt to reach above and beyond our Universe, perhaps appropriate since this half of the book will concern itself exactly with such things that are above and beyond our Universe; the post-Earth invocation, on the other hand, uses language that is more grounded, humble, and, if I may say, “down to earth” than its forerunner, also perhaps appropriate, given that the text concerns itself with events that take place on Earth. However, at the same time, Milton also concedes that he does require some divine aid to reach his ambitious heights in the first invocation, while declaring in the second invocation that he won’t need much more help now that he has his feet on firm, familiar ground, so to speak.

The first invocation in Book I begins audaciously, asserting Milton as a cut above precursors like Homer and Virgil. It declares its subject matter to be “Of man’s first disobedience” (1.1). The word “first” can be construed not only in a chronological sense, but also as first in importance. The entire premise of using an invocation is obviously an homage to past epic writers like Homer and Virgil, but Milton also uses the invocation as a form to elevate himself and his poem above his predecessors. Within the same paradigm that they used, he declares his work “first” on the list, above whatever smaller, pettier stories Homer and Virgil had to tell about Odysseus or Aeneas. There is no doubt that Milton adopts a very proud attitude in this regard. Furthering his tone of unabashed superiority over the Classical era, he invokes the “aid” of his Muse, the Holy Spirit (in contrast to the lesser pagan Muses of mythology), to, “with no middle flight… soar above th’ Aonian mount” (1.13-5). Unlike Homer, who’s Muse is actually the one telling the story through him as a simple medium, Milton merely asks for “aid” so that he himself may “soar.” Milton, in this way, takes more ownership, more credit, for what he’s about to write than was traditionally done before him. His statements about wanting to bypass the “middle flight” and go above the “Aonian mount” are both allusions to places in which Greek inspiration resided. Milton, therefore, will go beyond whatever mental plane Greek writers aspired to, to something greater, grander, and closer to God and Heaven. The word “soar” itself is an interesting choice as well; it invokes an image of an angel with God-given wings reaching heights that no other bird of the earth can. It is an image about as ambitious as an image can get without drawing parallels between Milton and God Himself. Finally, his claim that his poem “pursues things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme” is a further insult to Classical writers (1.15-6). The implication is that they were never Godly enough, they were never good enough, to even think to attempt something on Milton’s ambitiously grandiose scale. They were only able to attempt stories of much less significance, and much less purpose. Milton’s words are wracked with pride and boastfulness.

Besides raising his relative worth in comparison with preceding epic writers (or lowering theirs, whichever your perspective), he also, in a subtle way, implies the cleanliness of his own personal moral character. He claims that the Spirit that he is trying to contact prefers to speak to “th’ upright heart and pure” (1.18). Our right hand tells us that this Spirit definitely made good and answered Milton’s requests, or else we wouldn’t have a poem to read. The implication, then, is that Milton is indeed upright and pure, deemed worthy by the Spirit to communicate this message, and Milton is not afraid to boast about it.

Milton closes his invocation with more elevation of his subject matter, as can be seen in the following lines to the Spirit:

“Instruct me, for thou know’st; thou from the first

Wast present, and with mighty wings outspread

Dove-like sat’st brooding on the vast abyss

And mad’st it pregnant…” (1.19-22).

The footnote for this passage says that Milton is emphasizing “the creative power and wisdom needed for such great undertakings as creating the world and writing this definitive poem” (Elledge 8). Equating the omnipotent forces that created the known Universe with the inspiration for this one poem seems rather ridiculous. It indicates just how weighty and profound Milton sees his own work, a rather brazen and pretentious way to approach things, especially at the outset. It’s fine to be proud, but to equate a poem with all of Creation?

Finally, the last two lines of the invocation really don’t need that much elaboration. Forgetting the Spirit’s role in the matter, he says, “I may assert Eternal Providence, and justify the ways of God to men” (1.25-6). In using first person, he assumes the full responsibility for this substantial charge. The tone of the phrase “assert Eternal Providence,” makes Milton appear rather presumptuous and pompous; who is he to assert to the rest of mankind anything, let alone something as weighty as Eternal Providence? Furthermore, that he wishes to “justify the ways of God to men” shows that he sees “men” as lesser than him, unable to understand God’s justice, and therefore it is up to the more Godly, more intelligent Milton to explain to all the uncomprehending souls exactly what God means. This is arrogance at its most complete, tempered only by his implicit admission that he can’t do it alone, and that he does need divine “aid,” although Milton seems to shoulder a preponderance of the responsibility and the credit when it comes to this charge. Milton can also be seen in a better light if we recognize that it was perhaps Milton’s intention to sound that boastful to introduce the first half of the poem, as a way of recognizing that this part of the story will mostly concern itself with things happening beyond Earth, in Heaven and Hell. Regardless of his reasons, however, Milton’s language in this invocation is undeniably marked by boastfulness, pride, and ambition.

The second invocation in Book VII is marked by a slight tonal shift, conveyed by Milton’s concession that perhaps he did not belong in Heaven, where the first half of the book often ventured. While the general theme in the first invocation was one of soaring ascension to great heights, the first word of this second invocation asks Milton’s Muse to “Descend from heav’n…” (7.1). Instead of riding on her wings upward, he’s now asking her to come down to him, admitting that he can’t write from up on high anymore. This shows a more humble, self-abnegating Milton, who is willing to suggest that his place is still on Earth, among the rest of the mortals. He is now “down to earth” in more ways than one. Milton also characterizes his stay on a divinely inspired plane as being “an earthly guest” (7.14). In this line, he both continues to ground himself as being merely “earthly,” while humbling himself, appropriately, as simply a guest in Heaven.

Milton even goes so far as to say that while his inspiration was ascending towards Heaven in the first half of the poem, he needed his Muse’s “temp’ring” of the “empyreal air” to survive, meaning the air up there was not suitable for mortal lungs (7.14-5). The implication is that Milton was plainly not built of Heavenly material; in a very basic, profound way, his constitution simply was not made for the heights he had so brazenly aspired to in the first invocation. He is deconstructing his previous arrogance and realigning himself with the rest of man, for ultimately, he recognizes that he is just a man. In fact, he expresses reservations, or even fear, about having been so high up; he wants to “return to [his] native element” before he falls “erroneous… to wander and forlorn” in a plane of mental existence beyond what was meant for him, or any man (7.16-20). He concedes that Earth, his “native element” is where he belongs, where it is safe, where he can not and will not “fall erroneous.” The next few lines in the text fairly explicitly express this sentiment:

“Half yet remains unsung, but narrower bound

Within the visible diurnal sphere;

Standing on earth, not rapt above the pole,

More safe I sing with mortal voice…” (7.21-4).

These lines also suggest the aforementioned possibility that Milton wrote each invocation to match the subject matter of the different halves of the poem. He says that the “half” that “remains unsung” is “narrower bound within the visible diurnal sphere,” basically meaning that the second half of the epic deals with the Universe that man knows about, i.e. the Earth and the stars. Correspondingly, he asks to get off the wildly flying horse of inspiration, Pegasus, to more appropriately address the rest of his story. He wants to use a “mortal” voice to speak now, more comfortable to be “standing on earth” than “rapt above the pole” (transported above the Universe). All of these things show a more grounded and humble Milton than in the previous invocation.

In the last lines of this passage, he even expresses this concern: “So fail not thou, who thee implores” (7.38). Aside from the self-effacement inherent in the fact that he uses the word “implores” to describe the nature of his requests, Milton also recognizes the possibility of failure. If his Muse leaves him, he will fail. This is not the Milton from Book I, to whom the chance of failure never occurred. This Milton knows he is fallible; there are no claims of being “upright” and “pure.” This is as much humility as we can reasonably expect from a man of such self-righteous Puritanism. Of course, implicit in his descent back to Earth is the likelihood that he still believes he is the best to ever write among men. The phrase “my native element” can be seen as a way of staking out his claim: the Earth belongs to him. He may not be worthy of Heaven, but he is a master of Earth. Milton’s getting off the “Pegasean wing” of inspiration can be construed to mean that he doesn’t need it anymore. He can handle himself now. In effect, he has done this to regain control, to regain mastery of his domain. Consequentially, his newfound humility is possibly shadowed by his regained confidence, self-assurance, and daresay pride on returning to Earth. This is just conjecture of course; in reading only for definitive evidence, Milton’s language in the second invocation ultimately seems to have humbled itself for the second half of the poem, to match the Earth-bound subject matter to follow, i.e. Creation, Adam and Eve, and the Fall.

When all’s said and done, Milton’s genius can not be disputed. His work indeed is an extraordinary feat of the English language, written in an English of the highest order. It was indeed something that had never quite been attempted in that way before, and most likely never again. So whether he was humble or proud, or both, is ultimately, perhaps, immaterial. Either way, Milton probably was justified – nay, he deserved – to feel anything he wished to feel. His was indeed a God-like genius.

punk rock for kids

black jeans
black hoodie
black chucks
chain
laughing at the smiths

Time is Life

Don't say that time is money. Time is much more than money. Time is life, and therefore invaluable. Give me my two-week vacation over my pay-raise any day.

Baroque

Listenin' to a lot of Scott Walker lately. Baroque pop from the 60s. Some songs make me think of the Decemberists. New Decemberists album downloading now. Head swimming with dramatic, theatrical story-tunes. Welcome to October.

Ant Hills

In a dream, I woke up falling, a gentle downward momentum into a dark hole in the earth. I could feel the cool wind on my body, and the air smelled vaguely sugary. Somewhere, I could hear piano, but I couldn't tell if it was coming from above or below, even though I was falling rapidly. Perhaps it was coming from inside my own head.

When my feet finally landed on solid ground, slowly, gently, and silentlessly, a large black bird greeted me.

"We have been waiting for this moment to arrive."

"Are you sure you have the right human?" I asked. Maybe it was a dumb question.

"Yes."

With that, he turned on the heel of his claw and somberly led me down a dark, downsloping tunnel.

What opened up into view was completely shocking, not to say that it was particularly unexpected, as I knew what to expect, but it remained shocking nonetheless. The queen bee laid on a giant, intricately hand-crafted bed of twigs, weeping.

"She's been crying like that for seven years."

I nodded, and the black bird left the room.

I approached the bed, got on one knee, and whispered into the queen bee's ear. "How about a song?"

Through sobs, she said, "I have been weeping for seven years. What possible solace could a song bring me?"

I unslung the guitar case around my shoulder, and pulled out my acoustic guitar. Resting it on my knee, I plucked a few random notes. The guitar had a beautiful, resonant tone. I played three or four chords, and everything seemed to be in tune.

"This is called 'Hey Jude' by human musicians called the Beatles," I whispered to her.

what is art

what is art
is what art
art is what
what art is
is art what
art what is
what what what
is is is
art art art

?

there is a place

there is a place in every story and every song
they go there and we go there so that time will stand still
like the fury of an angry child -- stalled
out of steam, out of breath -- stalled
waterfalled stalled since the beginning and the end
the place is behind the frozen wall of ice
the place is the river, the whole river
which is moving, but isn't going anywhere
we have all dreamed it and they have all seen it
every story and every song rebounds off the walls
echoing into each other like the river, the whole river
which is completely silent, completely empty -- stalled

i'm rambling.

if you should ever lose yourself
in a quandary of existential proportions
if you ever fill yourself
with self-loathing and self-doubt
if you ever wreck yourself
over the loneliness, pain, and isolation
of extant meaningless existence

find yourself.
going there.
but never get there.
only reach the shore.

when you ain't got nothin'

when you ain't got nothin'
you got nothin' to lose
said dusty old recordplayer
but what does recordplayer know?
recordplayer's got an easy time of it
sit tight, get plugged in, spin
needle the grooves, feed the groove
i'm not listening to you, recordplayer
when you ain't never known nothin'
you ain't got nothin' to say
but all the words of others
that you won't ever understand

everything in my head at once

good god, y'all
war -- huh!
what is it good for?
asked the cleaning lady
sunburned like hell
hashbrowns, powerade
twice a day, rinse off
the music's loud
in your room
turn it down
for us to figure out
on the bad luck train
sleeping sleeping sleeping
she likes traveling
when i'm with her
don't be that guy
or she will kick your ass
not addicted to cloves yet
one more, one more, one more
paper tiger -- no, airplane
that wasn't a song!
need a new pillow
pillowcased backpack
deep bad conversation dish
always breaking rules
peace, calm, happiness
laughter, laughter, laughter
sake, sake, sake
it's the pitchfork that builds
builds the hay into a haystack
that's chicago! that's what we do!
we keep it local and
invite the rest of the world!
the airtrain has no wheels
because it's air... train.
twenty-one years old
a twenty-one-year-old
man man ha ha man, man!
fuze has heroin in it
drunk and stoned
fuck yo la tengo
fuck bush, bleeding heads
they don't look like pharmacists
there's a lot of hair on stage
walking from union park to the red line
on the lake, over the lake
capone's blue light
chopping peppers, garlic, stirring
mozzarella was my idea
gothic american hopper edward
i was a falling nighthawk once, but
these milk jugs are heavy
i'll never make it home
well-hung stable boy!
i was meant for the stage
thank you so much for everything
falling asleep and growing up
under the sun, white sheet summer
stolen kisses on the run
i can still feel your head on my shoulder
everything hits at once
you forgot your tropical coconut body wash

The Last Day

At 8:30 pm, I was born.

This was significant once a year for 21 years in a row.

Today is the last day, afterwhich... significant no longer.

"All downhill," as they say.

But it was a gentle, modest, unassuming slope up.

And down, most probably the same.

Have I learned anything in 21 years to take forward with me?

Some fundamental lesson that only a lived life can teach?

What combined wisdom can I draw from the years of infancy, childhood, adolescence, and now, adulthood?

Perhaps this:

Love... but don't talk to strangers.

And this:

Relax.

Trains Suck

Whether you're on one or watching one disappear.

*

They never mentioned how lonely it is to be an adult.

For Lisa

I was smoking a cigarette as Jeff Mangum wailed in my ears, going through his last verse of "In The Aeroplane Over The Sea" when she stopped me. I pulled the buds out of my ears and flung the cord around my neck.

"I'm sorry, I don't usually do this, I hate asking for help. But I'm six months pregnant and I'm homeless and hungry."

I gave her my usual response. "Sorry, I don't have any money on me."

"No spare change?"

It was true. I didn't have a single bill in my wallet, and my pockets were empty of any coins. I didn't even have a SEPTA token; I was walking home from 30th Street Station.

"I don't have anything. Sorry."

Her skin was a soft, smooth black, but her face bore lines hardened by thirty-eight years of hardship. She was wearing a backpack with what I imagined were all her worldly possessions inside. I noted the additional weight she had to carry in her belly. I thought about offering her a cigarette, but quickly realized the folly in that.

"I can buy you something at a restaurant. Some fast food. I have money on my card."

"McDonald's?"

I thought about it. It was out of my way. I'd have to walk with her back to 30th Street Station. "Sure. McDonald's."

"God bless you, you are the first blessing of the day." It was 8:30 PM.

"What's your name?"

"Lisa."

Lisa and I walked down the windy street under the darkening sky as the sun quietly slipped away, unable to compete with the low clouds.

She told me about how she had been through the shelter system, and how they had a bunch of very onerous rules. If you miss the 9 PM curfew three times, you're kicked out for several months. I responded in polite, clipped words. I didn't really know what to talk about with this woman whose life was so utterly and completely different from mine.

"I know everyone's got to go through hardships in life, but..." She trailed off.

When we got to McDonald's, she asked me how much she could spend. I told her I'd buy her five dollars worth of stuff. She wanted two double cheeseburgers and three McChickens. Good choice, I thought. Healthier than what I would have gotten for five dollars -- all five in double cheeseburgers.

"Get some ketchup and honey mustard, too."

"OK," I laughed gently.

As we were waiting for the food, she asked me what my name was.

"David."

"David?" She started to laugh. "You have a black name?"

I got a little confused. What was she talking about? Was she about to give me a "black" name? Could I be a LeBron or something? Shaniqua?

"No, I don't have a black name."

"Yeah, you do. A lot of black people have that name."

"Oh, I see." Right. "I would call it more of an American name."

"Yeah, yeah, that's what I meant. I'm sorry, you know, I didn't mean like, I didn't know how to put it..."

"It's OK." That was probably the tenth time I had said, "It's OK" to her.

"Where you from originally?"

"My parents are from China, but I was born here, so they gave me an American name."

The food arrived, and I asked for some ketchup and honey mustard. I took the bag and handed it to her.

"Thank you."

"You're welcome. Take care, Lisa."

"You too."

I put my earbuds back on and walked out of the station. It was dark. The last strains of Jeff Mangum's voice in "Two-Headed Boy" floated softly back into my world, and I lit another cigarette.

spanish guitar

spanish guitar lively lively
pluckity pluckity pluck
uno uno dos dos
bicycle wheels on grass
as the sun sets
light falling falling
a chord, e chord
pablos picasso and neruda
bump bump fall fall
in the color red

clips

i finally realized something today
i'm the reason my dad's depressed
he tried to tell me all about it once
you can't love a girl and hold her hand
you can't do two things at the same time
i didn't listen to him and i didn't hold his hand
now he's alone without a song on

i finally realized something today
they were all right and i was all wrong
i'm in an empty baby's crib i made myself
either writhing or crying, i don't know
if i could feel anything, i'd tell you
but no words can come of a gaping hole
in my mouth or in my blackened brain

i finally realized something today
my mom really fucked me up
i fell out of the nest overheated, dried out
crushed, flattened, small
perfect-ly uninteresting
no anna kareninas for this tolstoy
not even a broken fence to mend

try try try

try try try
as you might
do do do
as you can
a little termite
fighting the man
a little knight
in the caravan

Top Artists

Somebody's been listening to a lot of "Moon River" and looping Norah Jones albums at night, on my iTunes.

so long ago

were it the day
for your life
to be on the block
under the blade
with the crowd
in fear and agony
anticipation
running through
the veins
in your neck
(bulging
pumping
afraid)
what would escape
through your throat
out your lips at last?
a breath?
a gasp?
a curse?
a prayer?
or a laugh
at the look
in their eyes
?

ides

beware the ides of march
said the prophet to the flea
and tell them off to tomorrow
before the shadows reach here

Wind

Hi. I work as a clerk in the mailroom of a large, faceless corporation. I don't really like it; when I was a very young boy, I never dreamed of working in a mailroom or anything like that, but this pays me money every week, and it's extremely easy work to do, so I do it. Besides, you never know when the bigwigs might pay a visit to the mailroom and be so impressed by your work ethic that you get promoted to become their personal assistant. This isn't something I count on, though, I'm fully aware how much of the fantasy element that situation has in it. Mostly, I'm working for the money. There's no other reason to take this job.

Everyday, I wear a nametag that hangs around my neck, a white buttoned and collared shirt, black pants, black shoes, and black socks. Those are all the clothing items visible to anyone outside the company. Every other clerk in the mailroom also wears the same uniform. There might be slight variations here and there, this guy's shirt doesn't have a breastpocket, this guy's shirt has a breastpocket with a button, and so on, but in general, what we wear looks exactly the same, except for the nametags, which have different names printed on them. Mine has my own name printed on it. I'm pretty sure that's true for everyone else's, too, but I haven't gotten around to asking everybody. It's a large mailroom. I am twenty-five years old.

Today, there was a great wind throughout the entire city as I was walking to work. I walk to work because it's only two subway stops away from my apartment, and I've always felt that you shouldn't take the subway for only one or two stops. You should only take it for distances of three stops or more. It just so happens that these two specific stops between my work and home are a little bit far from each other relative to the average two stops, however. Because of this, every morning, as I'm walking to work, a doubt will strike me about my personal subway use policy. This doubt usually strikes me around Mornington Street, after I've walked the distance of the average two stops. I have to walk three more blocks after Mornington Street, which isn't too bad on its own, but given the irregularity of the distance, seems just slightly unfair. Thus, with three blocks left to go, I always end up reevaluating my views, but I never end up changing them. It's because I'm cheap.

This great wind struck the second I crossed Mornington Street this morning. Literally, the moment my shoe hit the sidewalk for the other side of the street, my nametag got blown from in front of me to behind me, my carefully combed hair (grooming and appearance are very important to this large, faceless corporation, even for clerks in the mailroom) became an unruly, disheveled mess, and all the loose papers on the street flew with great speed to some unknown destination behind me. This wind was blowing straight down my street, directly in my face. It felt like I was walking into a wall of air. Every forward step I took after the triggering step was a difficult struggle to gain ground against this truly "aerial" onslaught. Every time I lifted one foot, I would feel the precarious danger of standing on only one leg as I tried to plant the airborne foot somewhere far enough in front of me that I could actually feel like I was successfully walking forward. However, the wind was so fierce, I could never move that foot much farther than where it was before without being bowled over backwards.

I glanced down Mornington Street to the next block over, and noted that there was no such wind there! The trash on the street lay calmly by the curb, and people were walking around in completely still air. Somehow, this wind had targeted me, targeted my street. After about five minutes of struggling against this wall of wind, I found that I had gotten no farther than two feet. That is an extremely slow velocity. It is much slower than a snail's pace, which is about ten to fifteen feet per minute. I can't believe I kept struggling that long, actually, but it became a matter of principle for me. This was policy, this no-subway decision, and clearly, this wind had arrived from somewhere in the Universe to encourage me otherwise. I do not like having my decisions made for me, especially by weather. So rather than dampen my resolve or weaken my mind with stronger doubts, I became even more determined to walk to work, not just through this wind this morning, but forever, for as long as I work, no matter where that is, and no matter how far away I live in relation. This wind was against me, and I refused to back down.

I spent a full day completing the last three blocks. I got a little faster after I got used to my strategy, which was to take little steps as rapidly as possible. I got a little slower, too, after that, because of fatigue. But I made it to the building with about ten minutes left in the workday. I checked in with my boss, who is a little mean, but always fair. He looked at his watch as I came in and gave me a grim look. He noted my extremely unkempt appearance; I looked like I had just gone through a war, he said. I said I had, a war of wills, or rather, a war of my own will against myself. He nodded, without inquiring any further. As I turned to leave his office, he called out to me.

"By the way. Today was evaluation-day from the corporate headquarters upstairs. Early in the morning, we had to replace you so that none of the executives would notice anything out of place, so that everything would be functioning properly. They walked around the mailroom, inquired about stuff, chatted with some of the clerks. They talked to the new guy, the guy we replaced you with, and he gave some completely retarded answers. I think the bigwigs were actually a little offended by him. Anyway, it was kind of a mess, and we had to have him fired on the spot, in front of the bosses, to make them satisfied."

"Sounds like a mess."

"Yeah. You caused us a lot of trouble today by not showing up until now. Today was pretty important. My bosses are now going to pay a lot closer attention to me and the mailroom. They are going to be a pain in the neck every day until they find another person who needs a pain in the neck more than me. All because of you."

"I'm sorry."

"No, you're not sorry. You're fired."

So I took the subway home.

werks

work and what's worse
while we work
we're not ourselves
we become workers
we become work
work with a nametag
we're works
werks

The New Pornographers/Belle & Sebastian

at the show at electric factory last night
the new pornographers totally awesome
except no jackie hey hey hey hey
a lot of other mass romantic, though
keyboardist with short hair
carl/a.c. newman
belle & sebastian with scottish accents
best black eye on the whole tour
electronic renaissance
sukie in the graveyard
i don't love anyone (and more tigermilk)
girl from audience singing judy and the dream of horses
encore
harmonica and guy in suit
guy in suit dancing
stuart murdoch
best show ever
jealous?

Story

Once, in a dream,
I was you,
And I could see myself
Looking at me;

The rain began to fall,
Turning the leaves green,
And the trees breathed,
Turning the sky blue;

We did the best we could --
Me with you, you with me,
Until I saw my eyes turn red
And my hands folded in;

I think I got your clothes wet,
But I was soaked to the shoes
That you were wearing
On my feet;

And I fell through your hair,
With your hands over my eyes,
And I moved your lips
To the voice in my head...

You closed my eyes,
And when I awoke,
I was alone;
This dream had flown.

the roar

the roar came through your throat
like a whimper through a megaphone
and i could feel the rumble of voices
whispering, murmuring in my stomach
everything went black inside the whites
of my eyes until i blinked
gone
i tried to speak to you
but someone else's voice came out
did you notice?
my eyes closed over your face
and my body faded into the warm air
we had to hurry in the darkness
or risk being seen by ourselves
but nothing was in my control
my hands were in my ears
fingers tied together
everything happened off to the side
as i watched, helpless
as you laughed
but a song came through your throat
like water rippling down a river
and my eyes finally opened
i saw you for the first time
looking at me
and you looked just like me
a smile like a sunflower
eyes like tadpoles
there was nothing
to be afraid of
afterall --
except...

silence

Blogspotting

Chewing Gum, Coffee, and Slim Jims were vacationing in Edinburgh, Scotland when a group of low-life, anonymous Blogspotters attacked and killed the three of them with knife slashes to the face and body Tuesday evening, apparently in a dispute over money.

Chewing Gum reportedly bled to death on the sidewalk before ambulances could arrive, uttering the last words, "We should have stayed in England."

Coffee and Slim Jims were immediately rushed to Mother Superior's Foodstuff's Hospital downtown for emergency treatment. On the way there, Coffee was allegedly heard to get into an argument with the ambulance driver over Henry James before going into shock and passing away minutes later.

Slim Jims arrived at the hospital, immediately hitting on nurses trying to treat his wounds, explaining how he tried to heroically shield his other two friends from the attackers. He was also overheard complaining about Edinburgh's "fucking heroin problem." He stayed in the Intensive Care Unit for three hours before finally passing away, whispering the last words, "Scotland is shite."

A small, private funeral is planned for close friends and family members.

Local residents in Paris, France, have reported that ghosts fitting their exact descriptions have been haunting a bluish-colored blog...