Scatterbrained III: The Repeating Artist

 *Word of warning: Scatterbrained posts come forth out of an overcaffeinated sensation and thus are written hastily without regard for the reader's ability to follow my train of thought. This train is not really for riding, you see. It's more of a type of train that you just look at from afar and go, "Oh yeah. I kinda like trains." That's all that they're good for, when push comes to shove. You know this to be true. 

Stephen King once said to me, through the confines of his old devil, Hell is repetition.

Why is it that artists in general, and I wag my finger particularly at painters here, tend to repeat the same work over and over again. Why paint so many flowers? Didn't you ever imagine what a dragon might look like, Vincent? How many damnable nonrepresentative scattered-inkblots could you handle, Jackson? Is that why you came to the end that you did? -- because you couldn't get past it? And Woody, must you always have your women momentarily swoon all over your neurotic protagonist? How many times must we cover these bases?

Maybe there is a magic here I am missing. By examining relatively similar motifs, perhaps the artist is exploiting that small hue that stands distinct in each case. Maybe it is a practice of the science of studying outliers.

If there is wisdom here, I should find and categorize my personal motif and exploit that sad sucker for every inch of its wretched value. We are men, are we not? We are built for exploitation!

It's really quite simple. I don't have to examine long at all.

It's Kubrick that nailed it on the head, even if that wasn't his intention. I'll use him and exploit the snot out of the remainder of his soul. It's the black monolith. Remember it? It stood as our ominous constant in 2001: A Space Odyssey. At every evolutionary turn, there existed this signpost of terrifying adventure. That where we go, there we find it. The Black Monolith.

I remain fixated on God as the source of revelation. This is my place of eternal catharsis. This is the last and the first frontier; the alpha and omega of all treks. All my stories I conceive inevitably push somewhere towards that stalwart.

It's something akin to:

You're traveling through another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind; a journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination. That's the signpost up ahead - your next stop, The Black Monolith!

Dudududuu-dudududuu-duuuuuuuu! Black Monolith for the win!

But it ain't all that simple. Hobbitsies are tricksies, they are, they are. 

Too much of this new-truth serum pressing in on us from all sides is too much. Take, for instance, for example, e.g. i.e. etc. lol loling lolingly lmfao, this trippy trailer for Beyond the Black Rainbow. It's too much weird. It promises a new experience, a new rationale, a new epoch of consciousness. But more than likely it will fall into a category of 'too weird to get' films. The problem with the 'too weirds' is that you never end up investing personally in these plights, because it is too far removed from any substance of our reality. Sadly, weirdness tends to equal illogic and nonplotting. Those are cardinal sins of storytelling, they are, they are.

The Black Monolith is just a little bit weird. It's not toooo weird. Granted, the end of 2001 is batshit crazy, but let's happily sidestep that little bit of madness, shall we?

The point is -- yes, of course there is a point -- that a little bit of trans-truthfulness goes a long way.

I don't want to be a plagiarist, so let's use something else besides the Black Monolith to make our point...

Hmmm..... what to use, what to use.

Let's go with a singing minotaur. Everybody knows that minotaurs went extinct decades ago, so for them to show up in a film is bizarre. It's a trans-truthfulness, it is, it is.

Trans-truthfulness, that's a mouthful. Let's shorten it a bit. How about transfulness? Transtruth? No, no... I got it... Truthotaur!

Okay, let's see the genre of Truthotaur in action! Here's a few films that we can exploit to expose the deeper truth that of course we are all zestfully seeking with much, much obsession.

Gone with the Wind: Rhett leaves Atlanta for that real-time South he once knew. And as he heads out the door, we see the shadow of a minotaur dancing in the twilight, singing to the heavens, "Give me that old-time religion!" Bam. Truthotaur sneak!

Lawrence of Arabia: In that weird scene of torture and other unknowns, right before those secret atrocities are committed unto T.E. Lawrence, a minotaur enters the screen whistling a tune to "Singin' in the Rain". Bam. Truthotaur attack!

A Man for All Seasons: As Sir Thomas More puts his head down, waiting for the executioner to cut his head off, we see that there is another prisoner also awaiting the same end: a minotaur! More looks to his neighbor and says to him matter-of-factly, "I'll see you in paradise." They chop More's head off. The executioner raises his ax a second time, and we see the minotaur shed a tear and hum the tune "God save the king". Blam. Truthotaur torrent!

Hannibal: Whilst Hannibal is serving brain to his hosts, sitting at the other end of the dinner table is a minotaur. None of the characters acknowledge the beast's presence, but the creature sings quietly under his breath, "I'm in heaven, I'm in heaven." Over and over and over and over again. Slam. Flawless Truthotaur victory!

Master and Commander: When Commander Aubrey realizes that he in fact did not catch the commander of this french nemesis boat, Acheron, we suddenly get a close-up of the boat's real commander steering the ship: a minotaur! Over the seas we hear his faint voice leak out, "Yo-ho, yo-ho, a pirate's life for me." Fade out. End movie. Ka-cha. Truthotaur kill!

Forrest Gump: One of Forrest's ping-pong competitors is a minotuar! While they lob that little ball back and forth, the minotaur sadly raps solemn the Beatles hit, "Yesterday". We later see the same minotaur making friendly in the background at Forrest and Jenny's wedding.

See! It's so easy.

Trans-truthfulness, aka Truthotaur, is a violently pivotal incoming genre of media. Embrace it! Embrace the repetition. Maybe there's a little piece of heaven yet to be found in this hell.

Scatterbrained II: A Nervous Wreck of a Romance

All photos taken from Bambi (1942)

My dear friend Bradley presented me with a gift on Christmas day; a book of selected poems by Rumi. Being that Rumi was a Persian fella who dwelled back in the 13th century as a Sufi mystic bandying about around the same parts of the planet that I myself have been inhabiting these past two weeks, the book was a logical and welcomed gift indeed. 

...and sometimes, from fantasy comes union.*

 *All quotes taken from Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks

But there's a problem -- and I say problem in the most Quixotic manner possible. A problem I tell you. Oh please, let me tell you. Let us unite in this way, that I will tell you and you will hear. You will hear such things, and bring them to your inner mind. Be slow to interpret my problem, my dear friend! If you do that too soon, you will divorce us! And at once from whence we are departed, a river the length of the Bosphorus will divide grow and destroy the bridge between you and I. Just like that. So listen close. Listen and be found there in those words where I can find you.

Sorry about that, I got momentarily persuaded to write in the style that Coleman Barks translates Rumi. But fear not, I am back to my own likeness. Maybe.

Actually, it was in reading an unrelated playwright that I finally this evening became acutely aware of what it is precisely that is the causal form of my problem. After I inhaled enough of this very certain postmodern scramble of a play, in which all the characters seem to speak in mysteries and far off allusions, I noticed my internal dialogue was increasingly transfiguring into somesorta enigmatic, neurotic magician. I veiled all my own thoughts with remote pretenses and stunted conclusions. My sentences became finishings of other unthought lyrics. My mind desired to be a conduit of some rabid unconscious collective cacophony of diffused disorder. Even in recollecting, I am somersaulting towards that stimulant once again. That's the happening that subdued the logical, and incited a momentary riot of incisive intangibility. After all, that is the cost of counting the collective whole of blatant ink stains on a page...

If you're not here, nothing grows.

I lack clarity. My words

tangle and knot up.

Bah! Enough of that. Control. I must find control. Somewhere.

What was I talking about?

Ah yes, it was the problem; that was the thing: the problem.

It appears that being around any one perspective too long is the start of any problem for me. That being the case, this afternoon I spent a few listless hours reading that mysterious play Hellhound on My Trail by Denis Johnson, the result of which landed me in a sea of postmodern apocalyptic neurosis. Gracefully however, in eyeing the source of my sudden binge of implanted neurasthenia, I was instilled with the knowledge that I, at any one given instance, immediately want to mimic the very form, structure, and congealed wit of that written word that seems to me to be admirable. Whenever I read Shakespeare at any length whatsoever, I promptly assimilate myself to (what I imagine is) the 4-year-old son of William Shakespeare. Suddenly "thees", "thous", and, "thou spaketh" "of dreams to come" "from this" "dwarf, bead, or poppycock" ignite themselves into my outpouring stream of vocabulary.

Brother, stand the pain.

Escape the poison of your impulses.

Do you now see? Can you decipher the symbols submerged in my rhetoric? Or am I merely playing the dual role of Schizo and Self?

And what of Rumi? Oh-so glad am I that you remembered to ask! Rumi is the very centerpiece of my writing here and now! I would be shamed to forget his place amongst these ugly flowers of thought and symbol.

Do you know 

what you are to me? During the day,

you're my energy for working. At night,

you're my deepest sleep.

It's getting worse, isn't it? I can barely get a word in edgewise before the dance of the word-slipstream plunges me in. Yikes. Keep it together. Hold control of the reigns Dante. See the focus point and lean evermore towards it.

I changed my profile picture on facebook to that of an ostrich neck and head. Or maybe it's an emu. I blame Werner Herzog's My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done? for that li'l obsession... such crazy looking creatures they are. Why did God make them? To laugh?

When I am with you, we stay up all night.

When you're not here, I can't go to sleep.

Praise God for these two insomnias!

And the difference between them.

Ah! Gadzooks! I can't hold a thought on point worth a darn anymore. This is intolerable, I am sure. Why read on? For the romance, maybe. I did promise that in the title. Romance. Or at least, the illusion of such therein.

The minute I heard my first love story 

I started looking for you, not knowing 

how blind that was.

Lovers don't finally meet somewhere.

They're in each other all along.

Rumi. Come back to Rumi, Dante. Always come back. Be there, in that particular field. It is a pleasant one.

Then new events said to me,

"Don't move. A sublime generosity is

coming toward you."

And old love said, "Stay with me."

I said, "I will."

Rumi. I wish very much to call him my friend. It's tough not to platonically fall in love with the chap. He has a crystallizing affection for just about everything around him. This is an easily transmittable disease after you sift through enough pages. As wanting to assimilate my words with his own (as I tend to do with Shakespeare, and even today, with that Johnson fellow), I have found myself focusing on the lustful aspects of love since picking up his book for inquisition. It's a hell of a thing, really.

Your loving doesn't know its majesty,

until it knows its helplessness.

Now don't get me wrong, hear what I am saying; hear what I am saying for it is very important (that you, you who are here, hear -- not the letters themselves... or even still the message laid internal to the words that are represented by the letters) that you hear precisely the tone, atmosphere and even theme that I long for you to draw forth. I mentioned 'lustful love' in the preceding paragraph. I do not mean sexual activity when I say this. By no means (specifically speaking). I mean only this: the words have stirred up a longing for love for the sake of affection itself. A remembrance of 1 Corinthians 13 informs us that love is patient, kind, and epitomizes selflessness. Slightly, embarrassed then, I admit that Rumi stirs me to love (or is it more preferable just to use the word 'affection' - 'to have intimate affection for') for the sake of my own feeling.

If you want what visible reality

can give, you're an employee.

If you want the unseen world, 

you're not living your truth.

Both wishes are foolish,

but you'll be forgiven for forgetting 

that what you really want is

love's confusing joy.

Rumi. When I write this, it makes me feel that you are seeking to harvest a field of poor motives. I should not love for the sake of myself. Yet my intrinsic, innate, intangible, immediate response to your thoughts is to do that very thing.

Perhaps it is not all bad, Rumi. Perhaps you have not stirred only all-bad. When I state 'stirs me to love', I think not only of women, but also of friends; the past and the present.

They try to say what you are, spiritual or sexual?

They wonder about Solomon and all his wives.

In the body of the world, they say, there is a soul 

and you are that.

But we have ways within each other 

that will never be said by anyone.

Nevertheless, what am I to do now, with all this you have presented me with? Must I now abstain from seeking affection, and reminisce about how you momentarily spoiled me for the chance of such adventures?

Don't ask what love can make you do!

Look at the colors of the world.

What am I saying? My words barely have any meaning at all. If I were to try and speak precisely, I would say this: the question Rumi stirs is such: how can I seek out romance when I know I am doing so, at least in part, for my own gain? John 15:13, Greater love has no than this, that one lay down his life for his friends.

I should end now. Relent and end, Dante. This is how it must go. All things go this way...

Let the lover be disgraceful, crazy,

absentminded. Someone sober

will worry about things going badly.

Let the lover be.

But there is time still, if I hunt for it relentlessly. Now. Time now. Time can be on my side if I bend it to my will.

God is the one I want to know best, to unite with in full. But my new friend here Rumi tempts me to think of what happy tidings would come; if... If I come to my Lord with another. Hand in hand we could be. And when He asks, I could say with joy, "Lord, by sharing my blessings with another of your loved creations, I now know better how to be grateful and affectionate, and full of the fabric of the good things you've infused your creativity on. With this woman, my lover, very rib of my rib, I have found a partner in my longing to see your face." And there, at the end of time, times, and my time, I could set before the Lord all my love, all my being, resting in his dwelling place.

This is how it always is 

when I finish a poem.

A great silence overcomes me, 

and I wonder why I ever thought

to use language.

Scatterbrained I

Worry not: the Summation of all things is at the bottom of the page. Go there now and save yourself the time. Go.

O Brother, Where Art Thou? Okay, so it turns out the Sirens didn't turn Pete into a horny toad. I'm glad about that... but what about the Sirens themselves? Were they just three women out doing there laundry, looking for three wandering fellows to seduce while singing, "You and me and the Devil makes three..."? That seems a bit strange, no? And why is that one lady carrying around a big ol' jug of what I assume is some form of liquor? In the middle of the day? Is that how people act when there's a depression on? Strange. 

2012. Dude, if you want worldwide havoc, just read the last half of the book of Judges. That shit is crazy -- even though everyone did what they thought was good. The last sentence of Judges, In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did what was right in his own eyes. Judges 21:25 

Falling Down. We open on a man stuck in traffic on a hot Los Angeles morning. The world is mean and angry. He alone seems to understand this fact. With this realization in mind, he acts as any man should in such circumstances; he boils down his quest to one thing: he must get home to his child. This is could be a very stereotypical beginning to a hero's journey, but this corky of a film had me from its very first frame, for we are not watching the hero's journey, but the villain's. This our protagonist's last revelation. "I'm the bad guy?" He asks incredulously. How many of us will come to realize the same thing on judgment day?

Silent Light. This Mexican film (though filmed within a Mennonite community that speak a weird hybrid of German/Spanish, I think) ended up as the favorite film of several of my more filmish friends a few years back. I think it's about forgiveness. Or salvation. Or guilt. Come to think of it, I'm not too sure. The method of filmmaking was a series of very long shots. Generally speaking, this is a pleasing format for me, as it allows characters the space to roam about and act human. Such styles can also be characterized and critiqued for being slowwww. Again, this doesn't bother me. That being said, what did bother me in this particular experience, is that the characters underacted. Incredible things happen, and yet people barely move. This was hard to believe, wherein if I were sitting amongst their numbers I'd be banging my drum hollerin' through the countryside making as much noise as possible due to the sights I'd had seen.  I tend to wear my emotions on my sleeve. The fact that these people did not created a dissonance between me and them.  

Thor. The trailer just came out. I know nothing about this franchise comic book story, but I am already frustrated by it. I don't mind that Thor is an exiled extra-terrestrial. No, it's his weapon of choice that annoys me. He has this giant hammer thing. Let me be clear, as Old Boy taught us, the hammer is indeed a badass piece of armament. However, did you see Thor's hammer? It's so short. I keep looking at it thinking to myself, 'It would be so much more effective if the handle was a good foot longer. You can't get any leverage out of that thing!' Also, apparently Natalie Portman is the heroine in the flick -- see the proceeding paragraph for why that's troublesome.

Black Swan. I have yet to see this film. I do not believe I will see it. I believe I shouldn't see it. This is a point of discouragement for me, as it is being lauded as a potential frontrunner in the Oscar race this year. My friends are singing its praises. I have seen and intimately appreciated every single previous film by the director Darren Aronofsky. The film contains erotic lesbian behavior. Those images will stay with me if I let them in. Images can kill. They will leak into my thought life. And there, in that place, that's where my soul lies! Such thoughts lead to obsessions. And an obsession is a god. I will be burned by such a fire as that. A venomous, sinful fire. 

Pi. Darren Aronofsky's first film was about a guy who discovers God's true name. This code was like some sort of bite from the tree of knowledge, for it gave this little man the capacity to know all sorts of bits of data. In the end he can't handle such greatness. He can't handle it. He can't deal. He can't...  Good times!

White Christmas. This is my parents' traditional Christmas viewing. I reckon it is good for everyone to have such a tradition. But I don't much care for White Christmas. Bing Crosby - eh. I don't trust the man. 

It's a Wonderful Life. This is a superior choice, and a common one at that, for the annual Christmas viewing. But it's so emotionally exhausting. We get, what, 2 hours of poor ol' George Bailey just getting the snot stolen out from underneath him, until we finally have that cathartic, maybe 5 minute happy ending. That's a lot of turmoil for such a quick resolution. Plus, I reckon an annual Christmas film should have more to do with Jesus than just a hapless, wingless angel. 

The Black Stallion. Now there's a flick I could watch every year. It's a bit tropic for wintertime, but hang with me. Animals. The Stallion. Animals have that same sense of innocence about them that we equate with babies. So it is easy to transfer the innocence of the Black Stallion to Baby Jesus, yes? Sound like a plan? Plus, animals are far more intriguing to watch on screen than babies. Babies just kinda sit there most of the time. Granted, most animals don't do a whole lot more than sit and graze either, but they do it with a bit more style than babies. Camels got it going on. Monkeys too. And Ant-eaters... crazy lookin' piece of creation right there, I tell ya. 

Summation of Terror! (and other hyperboles):

• O Brother, Where Art Thou?  - Where can I find one of these Sirens?
•  2012 - Been there done that... in like 1500BC
• Falling Down - One badass descent!
•  Silent Light - Emote dagnamit, emote!
•  Thor - For Pete's sake, get a longer handle!
• Black Swan - Sigh (sad)...
• Pi - Sigh (happy)...
• White Christmas - Never trust the Bing.
• It's a Wonderful Life - Too much work.
• The Black Stallion - A Christmas Classic?

And that is that! Yes, that's -- that is to say... that's what I have to say about those things to which I have spoken. Now. Maybe tomorrow I'll think differently. Now. Go.