Ebb and flow: an album of immeasurably related thoughts

1. Ebb and Flow
You need the normal conflicts of life, like the work week to make the weekend feel good; Friday’s up because Monday’s down; rainy days make sunny days nice. You need contrast; you need ebb and flow. Without both, life is just ebb.

2. Free shows you should watch on HULU.COM:
A—Murder One
This is a mid-nineties courtroom drama that started before Law and Order reached its immortal peak. The show’s unique angle is that it follows one trial through every possible phase of criminal procedure. This is the format for the first season, but the second season follows three consecutive cases over the course of the 18 episodes. Dexter fans ought to watch the second season from episode 13 on. The case is about a serial killer who kills bad guys—and this show is from1997.

B—Journey Man
Like Quantum Leap, but this guy leaps through time as himself. He has to use his intuition (and an i-phone and google which is called “spider crawler” in the show) in order to help people, or situations. This is one of the better-conceived stories premised on time travel.

3. What is a show? A show shows us things; it does so in showey ways. If a show shows off, the show might be turned off by us.
4. How would your concepts of motivation and achievement change if, just for a moment, you suspended the idea of a “genius” from your mind—as if there were really no such thing as one?
5. Most shows that are premised on the implication of some greater scheme going on behind things (Quantum Leap, Lost, X Files), lead miserably and inevitably to disappointing conclusions. This is because we are compelled by the mystery. Lost, The X Files, and lately Heroes, reach a point where they carry on almost nonsensically. This is why I urge you to watch Journey Man, which appropriately ends abruptly, discontinues, before it ever gets to try to explain itself.
6. Explanation is an activity best-fitted for things that can actually be explained.
7. Is it possible to explain how humor works without being boring?
8. There are some albums, like The Beatles' Abbey Road, or Pearl Jam’s Vitalogy, that make perfect sense as cohesive wholes.
9. Conversational flow is premised on the things you want; they are small, incremental things that change along the way.
10. A conversation is like a tennis game where you get to catch the ball, put it away, and switch it with one you’ve had in your pocket.
11. A conversation is like a tennis game where suddenly you’re playing Jenga.
12. If I had to pick which works of art are most like conversations, I would have to say musical albums. This is because the residual feelings from earlier songs are stimulated by the current song. Also, there is a process of relationship between listener and artist.
13. The 70’s notion of playing whole album sides is one of a very short list of good ideas from that decade.
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Lessons in getting things

It only takes about ten minutes to “get” Frank Zappa; but that ten minutes is gradually sprinkled out over a lifetime.

Comedy is more enjoyable if you don’t expect drama to be superior.

We take better care of gifts than the things we get for ourselves.
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On Coming Attractions

In movie theaters

Coming attractions—when done well—ought to add to the mystique of being in a movie theater. They should excite the viewer, causing an increase in both literal and figurative appetite, making the jaw move quicker, causing two-thirds of the popcorn bucket to disappear into the gulliver.

Or, they could just ruin everything.

When choosing a career-path

There is a brief window (between the ages of 18-22) when most of us have the opportunity to choose the realm that we can enter into for a career. This matters more than SAT scores, where you get into college, what your GPA is, etc. The ability to know what your future self will be satisfied with when you are so young is one of the most valuable skills in life.
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Story conceptions and misconceptions

It is not due to a case of a mere synonym usage that the word “program” sometimes replaces the more common “show” when referring to those things that we watch on television. A program—which is essentially a machine that is made up of ideas rather than physical parts—is what a story really is.

My three-year-old son, when I tell him about the shows that I watched when I was a kid, asks the question, “How does it work?” The innocent approach to stories that children have can teach us lessons of incredible depth. His question gets to the heart of the matter on what matters in a story. How a story “works” is essentially the regular characters, where they are, what they do, what they encounter, and how they usually react.

The typical concept of the “suspension of disbelief” is an incomplete notion of what a writer needs to achieve with his audience. It is really the inspiration of belief, and not the suspension of its opposite that creates an enthralled audience. The notion of the “suspension of disbelief” confuses the realms of the religious with the relationship that humans have to fiction. There is a large space in our minds for fictional belief. When we really get a story, the story is a world unto itself. The chronology of events is less important than the imagined universe of the characters. Additionally, the notion of suspending disbelief is a perversion of the purpose of a story: to entertain, to merely bring emotional pleasure at a conclusion, or “climax.”
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Economic strain: a foundational element of the American sitcom

“The Honeymooners” presents characters struggling to not be caricatures. Additionally, it laid the foundation for the economic purpose of the sitcom. Jackie Gleason—if he didn’t perfect the get-rich-quick scheme—used it in “The Honeymooners” in such a way that sitcoms, by their very nature, and because of him, will inevitably and always be grounded in problems about money. Punchlines from the show often arise out of economic strain. Ralph Kramden is literally “crammed in” as Alice would often remind us with her mantra of having to “stare at these four walls.” Additionally, repetition is key to a sitcom's use of humor. Kramden’s stock lines are comedic renditions of domestic sounds: yelling, arguing...

The get-rich-quick scheme goes hand in hand with the undo suffering of the characters (not getting to go on vacation; hocking a bowling ball for a gift, having to eat celery and pretend it’s a steak). The audience has an ironic relationship with the hero of the sitcom insofar as we do not want him to succeed and we laugh at his failure. Ralph Kramden is funny when he messes up. He’s funny when he’s wrong but thinks he’s right.

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Some thoughts on Irony

Irony is an increasingly fascinating concept to me. Few situations are actually ironic, but the notion that things (words, concepts, people, etc…) can have irony when considered in relation to one another is plentiful. Lately, I’m particularly fascinated with how Irony turns up in words, and more precisely, in titles. Here is a short reflection on how the title of The Catcher in the Rye is Ironic.

The title The Catcher in The Rye is an ironic one on several grounds. To begin with, it is the result of a mistake that Holden makes regarding the song, “Comin’ through the Rye.” That both Holden and the little boy he sees singing this song on the street misunderstand the very non-innocent implications of the song is a testament to just how innocently oblivious Holden is. His wish to protect children from falling off of a cliff as they innocently run through the rye, a psychoanalytic theorist may argue, is really a fantasy that Holden creates embodying his own experience with sudden loss of innocence, namely the death of his brother Allie. But beyond the psychological reasons behind the fantasy, Holden’s fantasy also speaks to the place that he wants to have in the world. Mainly, he wants to have a symbolic place in the world. An additional irony is how irresponsible Holden is with everything else, yet he believes that he would make a good Catcher in the Rye.

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The Great Gatsby and American Identity

The Great Gatsby is one of the most ironic titles in the American Cannon. Is he really great? Certainly not to the old-money characters of West Egg. This presents a dilemma with American Success (not to say, The American Dream which is a little too over-used for this particular novel). To what extent should our success be self-made, or grounded in lineage?

Fitzgerald plays on the notion that money will always impress and he unfortunately reminds us how impressive money one hasn’t earned is. But for an early 20th Century novel, Fitzgerald impressively moves beyond the mere monetary notion of American success. Acceptance, he reminds us, and love, are almost deal-breakers for feeling like one has a complete life.

The speculation that Gatsby might actually have some other quality to him not directly mentioned in the novel (it was argued a few years ago that Gatsby was black; it has been hypothesized that he was Jewish) that would cause alienation is a speculation that misses the point. That Gatsby is not accepted, and that his not being accepted is a mystery to readers, is an achievement on the part of the author more so than an actual confusion. Fitzgerald makes us wonder about the exclusivity of class in America.

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"I'm Walkin' Here!": Cell Phones and New York Philosophy

I used to hate cell phones, and in many ways that hate hasn’t completely gone away. I bought my first cell phone in the summer of 2002. I thought it would be nice to talk to people while walking around outside. And, it is nice to do that, but I miss the days when you had to make sure that you left the house with enough quarters for the pay phone. First of all, it gave you something to do with that small pocket on the front of the jeans.

Have you looked at a pay phone lately? There’s something bus-station-creepy about them now.

In any event, Danah Boyd (I want to evolve to not hear the cell phone) got me thinking about this again. She explores why cell phone conversations are so irritating to overhear.
Check it out if you get a chance.

NYC is not as grundgie as it used to be

Here’s some New York Philosophy for you: I wish, I mean I really wish, that the following NYC neighborhoods would regain their prior danger: Times Square, Hells Kitchen, and Alphabet City.




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Wearing the white belt again: putting the ego away and learning to learn

I write with a sense of I-know-what-I’m-talking-about. I speak this way too; I’m a teacher by trade and I find that students expect this, it works well for them. My writing, as well, has always been better in the non-fiction authoritative genre. There are those who are better at exploratory kinds of writing. Even here, while discussing an exploratory topic, I do so with the I-know-what-I’m-talking-about tone.

There are a few things I want to point out about this. First, we all have our mode. Going through life, getting older, is in large part an acceptance, not really a learning, of our modes. I think most of us know what our mode is from a very young age; accepting it is what takes a while. Secondly, the mode is not the same as the content. There’s quite a bit that I don’t know, but marveling about it has never been my forte. In fact, I often marvel at how others can marvel at their own new learnings.

Writing, in many ways, is parallel to acting. The big difference is that an actor plays many roles, distinctly different ones, whereas a writer writes in one voice. However, if you really look at an actor, and I don’t mean study in an academic sense, I mean look at over the decades of your own movie viewing or TV viewing existence, you can see that essentially the same voice is always there in the actor.

At the risk of intentionally avoiding the cliché example, I will purposely use Marlon Brando. Brando was one of the most dynamic actors that there ever was. He had the ability to change the conception of well-known characters; consider his rendition of Brutus in Julius Caesar. Yet, I suggest that he essentially used the same mode of being in some of his greatest roles. Compare two scenes from films made decades apart: On the Waterfront and The Godfather. What I admire about Brando is his range; he can be so strong in a quiet sense and so awe-inspiring when loud and expressive. The two scenes I want to compare are the one in On the Waterfront, the famous “contender” scene, with the scene in The Godfather where he has to apologize for the fact that Sonny oversteps his authority. The part of the “contender” scene that I think is so wonderful is where he simply moves Charlie’s gun aside and shows disappointment. Similarly, in real life, I recall that Brando was once asked to swear on a bible and he gently refused because he was an atheist. Again, he asserts gently. It’s so simple, so plain, and so awfully difficult to do.

In any event, this essay has a title that has to do with remembering when we were beginners, putting the white belt on again. What I wanted to say about that is that, ultimately, no matter how well we know what we’re doing, and we could literally be experts in what we’re doing, we never fully understand what we’re doing. I think philosophy as a subject covers this concept the best. The very nature of philosophy is founded on the idea that the most obvious of given facts isn’t really so; that there’s always an enormous threshold of inquiry, and therefore surprise, behind anything that can be known, by anyone.

One recent thing that I’ve learned about writing that is very hard to keep learning: audiences do not want to be pulled around by the nose. People want to be left to understand. This presents problems to all writers but particularly to those of us who prefer to write non-fiction, expository essays. It’s so tempting for me to now “rap it all up,” or revise until it’s perfectly organized and there’s really nothing else left for you the reader to do but digest what I’ve said. We make choices when we write, and it is what we choose not to say that really gives shape to what we choose to say.

I heard once that the mind works at a pace of about 600 words per minute. If that’s the case, then summaries and well-formed essays are really an insult to what the mind can naturally do. You know what I mean.


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The hearer makes the message: audience and the evolution of meaning

Stories and the nature of story-telling are natural to the mind because they begin in our minds. The first story we tell ourselves is the story of our own lives. We are often the main character of this story and sometimes the main narrator. We learn who we are through what we tell about ourselves and what we hear told about us, from others. Our lives are folklore.

The audience is important because they transfer the story to us, through response, approval, reaction.

I wish sometimes that my essays, like rock songs, could be recited live, in front of a responsive audience; an audience that recites along with me. Then, I might be able to have an insight, and a change of understanding, like the one Eddie Vedder had about the song “Alive,” as he explained on VH1 Storytellers.

Vedder explains that the chorus, “I’m still alive,” was initially meant as a “curse.” Over the years though, he heard the audience sing it in celebration, and that “lifted the curse.”

A problem for writing is tone. It takes forever to develop and then, one wonders, how many readers can really perceive it? No offense (said softly, and not really seriously), but I only have words to work with. Spaulding Gray had the right idea: stand on a stage and talk aloud with lighting and sound effects. Ideas are a show. An audience is a group of people.

The comment form on blogs and online magazines is a start for audience input, but it is nothing compared to the input from a crowd at a rock concert. The connection that rock concerts offer between the singer and the audience is an immediate one, one that the creator gets to experience. Writing forms a connection over time. And, the connection for the writer is as much in the imagination as the content of the writing is.

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