A Private Reading

Been a busy & productive weekend, writing-wise.  My latest Virginia Neighbors deadline was Thursday.  It was my turn to post a piece on the writing blog I share with Justin.  & I have 4 books for review for FLS, two of which I’ve finished & outlined.  So, I’m sure you’ll understand, gentle reader, why I’m late with this post.

If you’ve read Anne Fadiman’s Ex Libris, you might remember the essay “Sharing the Mayhem.”  Fadiman writes on how reading a work aloud is to experience it in a different way.  The reader is forced to slow down, to be re-awakened to the specific word choice the author uses, to feel the drama in each sentence.  Reading it to someone else makes it more fun.  Not only are you experiencing the text differently, you get to cast it anew for someone else.  Reciting aloud plays on our natural storytelling impulse.

Fadiman also writes, “The most private of all reading, of course, are performed by lovers.”  She invokes Paolo & Francesca in the second circle of Hell in The Divine Comedy before moving onto her own tamer nighttime readings with her husband.  The essay ends on a very sweet, romantic note: two people expressing their love for one another by sharing their love of literature.

Soon after reading “Sharing the Mayhem”, I decided Kurt & I would start reading to each other again.  I mentioned last week that our relationship had started with us reading Lilith together.  We hadn’t really found another book since; it’s difficult to pick the right one.

You want to pick something that you’ll both be interested in.  Something that’s fun to read.  Something that won’t take too long to finish; remember, any decent sized novel you could finish on your own in a few weeks takes much longer when read out loud.  (There’s a reason most audio books are abridged.)  So, we ended up picking Camus’ The Stranger.  The prose is terse but stunning.  It’s not too long.  Not only is it an existential mystery; it was inspired by The Postman Always Rings Twice.

But, my favorite part, of course, is how Kurt reads it.  He reads very deliberately and calmly.  Also, by virtue of being an excellent mimic & by having a brother who’s spent most of his adult life in France, Kurt can slip in & out of a decent French accent as casually as if he were throwing a ball.  I actually wanted to cry when he read the part about pathetic Salamano & his lost dog, “that dirty, stinking bastard.”

But now, we’re reaching the end & it’s time for me to pick something.  I don’t have very high hopes; part of the reason we stopped before is because Kurt could never stay awake for more than a paragraph whenever I read.  & one of my pet peeves is having to recount every detail to someone else; I have little patience.

I’m thinking we’ll either continue the mystery theme & choose from the noirs on my shelf.  Or, the other choice I’m leaning toward is a group of slim poetry books by Buffy Morgan, Sarah Kennedy & Eleanor Ross Taylor.  (There was an LSU advance copy explosion at my house awhile back.)  Poetry–lyrical, layers of meaning & sound to tease you into submission, each piece standing alone with no loose plot ends to explain.  I think it sounds perfect.  We’ll see if my audience agrees.

 

Text & Film: Lilith

Like all people, I too get sucked into the book vs the movie debate.  I have some friends who are adamant that the book always wins & I agree to a point.  Books are always better than the film on the sole point that you, the reader, can play with it in your head however the hell you want.  It makes something like The Divine Comedy or Mary Caponegro’s “The Father’s Blessing” even better because your personal visuals break limits that no camera or CGI graphic can.

Conceding that point, that doesn’t mean that film is always inferior.  I have about four categories that film adaptions fall into.  They are:

Obviously Bad Ideas: Wise Blood, Bastard Out of Carolina
Makes the Book Look Better: Fight Club
Don’t Even Tell Me: Middlesex, The Killer Inside Me
Strong, but Not Quite Equal: Short Cuts, The Last Picture Show

One of the films I would put in the “Strong, but Not Quite Equal” category would be Robert Rossen’s version of Lilith.  I’m not sure how well-known either the book or the film are.  I ran across the book while I was working at Borders & it turned out that my future husband Kurt had read it.  Obsessively.  The author, J. R. Salamanca, had been one of Kurt’s professors at U of Maryland.  The book also took place in Rockville, where Kurt had grown up, & was set in the local asylum, Chestnut Lodge.  So, I bought a copy & the first few months of our relationship consisted of us reading the book to one another.

The story goes like this: An idealistic young man growing up in Rockville goes to work at Poplar Lodge, the local asylum, out of a desire to help others, but also to find his place in the world.  He gets hired as an occupational therapist and works with many of the damaged people who are inmates there.  He falls in love with a girl his age who is schizophrenic.  Her name is Lilith & she’s constructed an elaborate fantasy world that fascinates him.  She draws him further into her world, leading him to doubt his own reality & to take drastic measures in order to control her & his perception.

I enjoy this book, for a lot of reasons other than personal association.  First, it’s one of the few books I’ve read that don’t paint the girl as a fragile flower doomed to her fate.  Lilith as a character is a force to be reckoned with, which Vincent learns through the course of the book.  Second, I read this soon after rereading Look Homeward, Angel & before I dove headlong into Faulkner-land.  & I have since always had this dream of writing an involved academic paper on morality & the male perspective in Southern Lit.

Needless to say, I approached the movie Lilith with all of this baggage, all these ideas that still pester the hell out of me.  The first time I watched the movie, I struggled to leave all that at the door.  These squares of celluloid were never going to live up to comparing Eugene Gant’s sexual awakening to Vincent’s awareness of Lilith’s acts of passion.

In any case, Lilith is an intriguing movie.  The most interesting contrast is how Vincent’s character is tweaked in the transition.  In the novel, Vincent is something of a social outcast.  He’s born out of wedlock & is indirectly ostracized as a result.  He tries to be a scholar, he tries to be a soldier, all to no avail.  Poplar Lodge is a place of misfits; it’s a perfect fit.  In the movie, Vincent is played by Warren Beatty.  Which is to say that Vincent is Warren Beatty.  Which means he’s a misogynistic dick.

Ok, that’s harsh.  The movie tries to paint Vincent as this failed dreamer, as someone who’s just trying to deal with what fate’s handed him: a mother who goes insane, a girlfriend who’s abandoned him for a secure marriage, a spinster grandmother who has no idea how to deal with him.  The conventional morality that is so complex in novel-Vincent becomes simplified in movie-Vincent.  This clip is a good example of the tone of his character.

What Beatty does bring to the role is the just-under-the-surface threat of violence that makes Vincent just a terrifying as Lilith in his worst moments.  You can believe that movie-Vincent would beat the shit out of some dirty bitch because she had it coming.

& speaking of our lady, Jean Seberg is amazing as Lilith.  She is coy, angry, manipulative, idealistic in her own misdirected way.  She captures much of what makes novel-Lilith so interesting.  She is not frail & she will not be coaxed into conforming.  One of the best early scenes in the novel is included at the beginning of the movie.  During an outing, she gets an inmate who is in love with her to fetch a dropped paintbrush from a perilous cliff.  After Vincent rescues him from a near-fatal slip, he confronts Lilith on why she sent the boy out to such a dangerous place.  She looks at him & states clearly, “Because I am mad.”

The other shocking thing about Lilith is that she is carnal.  Part of her delusion involves a philosophy of “pure love” in all it’s forms, that it is the only way to healing & understanding.  Not only does she ensnare Vincent, her other conquests include other inmates at Poplar Lodge (male & female), Vincent’s co-workers, & (supposedly) her own brother.  One of the creepiest scenes in both versions is how she works her wiles on young boys.

There is one small speech Lilith makes before her final descent into madness.  I wish I could post a clip of it here, but I couldn’t find it.  She says (of herself), “Do you know what she wants?  Do you think they can cure this fire?  Do you know what they have to cure?  She wants to leave the mark of her desire on every living thing in the world.  If she were Caesar, she’d do it with a sword.  If she were a poet, she’d do it with words.  But she’s Lilith.  She has to do it with her body.”

What is also frightening about both of these characters is that they both will go to any lengths to have what they desire.  With Lilith, it is experiencing sexual ecstasy with whoever will sate her hunger.  With Vincent, it is struggling to control the illusion that he’s grown to need: someone (specifically a woman) who will never fail him, who will always be his exclusively.  In the movie, this “infection” passes from Lilith to Vincent until they are both mentally unable to deal with the “real world”.  In the book, Vincent doesn’t fall into the same pit as Lilith, but does remain broken.  The only difference is that Lilith is carted off to a maximum security asylum while Vincent is deemed penitent (& sane) enough to be accepted into society.  An irony considering that what he’s wanted his whole life, it just now comes at the price of his suffering.

I could go on & on; there’s so much more I could say.  But, either in film or in text, Lilith remains a vital interesting work.  & either way she leaves us wondering about her, the “wild girl with dirty hair whom you keep locked in your attic.”

 

Love & Dysfunction in Facebookland

I will be the first to admit I spend more time on Facebook than I should.  I’m not completely addicted or have 1 million apps like some people I know, but I do check it no less than 5 times a day.  One of my employees isn’t signed up on Facebook & I constantly warn her away with a straight face.

Part of the reason is because, yes, I’m obsessed with my Facebook but also because simply, Facebook makes life weird.  That’s the long & the short of it.  Facebook, & I’m sure other social media, basically reduces you down to numbers, options & a virtual trail of clicks & Wall stories.

I mean, some things on Facebook are capable of it’s own limited poetry, like a coy status update or what someone might write in their info section.  For instance, when my friend Courtney’s mother passed away, she wrote in her “About Me” section one sentence: I’ll never stop missing my mom.

But, what I’ve noticed is that virtual acts in Facebook often have strange repercussions in the real world.  The term “friend” has become this loaded word, a phrase that includes indifference, a desire to be recognized, exclusivity.

I’m “friends” with people I hardly talk to, simply because we knew each other at some point in time.  I’m “friends” with a few of my former professors, which automatically makes me re-think anything I post so I don’t embarrass myself.  I’m “friends” with my mother, who would consider it the epitome of rejection if she wasn’t included.  Which I can understand; I’ve been “unfriended” by people I never talked to & still thought “Why did they do that?  What happened?”

Or maybe this story would better illustrate my point:  My husband Kurt originally got a Facebook account awhile back & didn’t tell me.  He wasn’t being deceptive or sneaky; he wanted to see what was taking up so much of my time.  He wasn’t impressed & intended to get rid of the account when a couple of our mutual friends found him & “friended” him.  In fact, that was how I found out; I read a notice on my friend Erin’s Wall.

I was so hurt & upset because I felt at the time that Kurt was setting up his own virtual identity & I wasn’t a part of it.  The term “friend” reared it’s ugly ambiguous head & I became incredibly jealous.  That one little term made me blind to everything else: home-cooked meals, watching The Wire together, kissing on the Key Bridge suspended over the DC/VA border, our conversations in psuedo-Dutch.

It’s stupid now, but at the time the slight was very real, very immediate.  These are my connections; you are not one of them. Of course, Facebook can never replace the real thing.  It can’t give me what I feel when I watch Kurt nap on the couch, long eyelashes on his cheek & toes peeking out of his holey socks.

Time may also heal all wounds, but Facebook certainly plays on them.  Every time I login, my father’s name & picture pop up in the “Suggestions” sidebar.  I’m currently estranged from him while my sisters, who have “friended” him, are not.  My pulse beats a little faster each time I see his name, remembering all that is between us.

It’s an ironic moment, something that makes me laugh & groan at the same time.  Facebook–the great mediator.  “If only we were Facebook friends, all our problems would be solved.  Or at least I could make it a point to ignore you in cyberspace as well.”

The other wrinkle in this family Facebook drama is that I have a sister I’ve yet to meet.  I can punch in her name & find 5 different people who are about the right age & description.  I can glance at the profiles of strangers & think, “Are you my sister?  Are you?  Are you?” & wonder what that really means.  To have access to someone at the click of a button, to make that connection & have no idea who that person is truly.

Or maybe that’s the trick.  Maybe all Facebook profiles really reveal about us is how little we think we know about each other & ourselves.

 

Now Playing: Vancouver

Last week, I blogged a little about one of my favorite musicians, Matthew Good.  This week, I thought I’d post a few thoughts on his newest CD Vancouver.  Which (CD is misleading) I downloaded it thanks to a friend’s thoughtful Christmas gift.

Vancouver is a collection of songs about Good’s hometown & the different experiences he’s had there.  They are dense, moody & thoughtfully crafted.  Often times I think Beautiful Midnight, the title of the first Matthew Good CD I ever bought, could apply to his whole catalog.

“Last Parade” opens the album, an anthemic tune that walks the line between dynamic (“It feels like time to fuck or leave”) & dirge-like (“Let the dirt fall around me/Baby ain’t it good to be back home”).  “Last Parade” & other Matt Good songs like it are an example of why I’m so caught up in his music.

I don’t know how well I can explain it; the lyrics, the repetitive piano notes & the building guitar chords match aurally to these thoughts I have about human nature.  The difficulty of being human & flawed but resolute to live aware of that & in spite of it.  Good’s music is an affirmation of that for me.

Anyway, all that aside, after the strong opener, Vancouver falls into the same trap that Audio of Being, a previous Matt Good CD, does.  The first uptempo song immediately sinks into slower “downer” songs.  Both “The Boy Who Could Explode” & “Great Whales of the Sea” are excellent songs.  However, like many of the other songs on the CD, they rely heavily on string orchestration to create atmosphere.  This tactic has worked to underline the drama on previous CDs but has always been used sparingly.  I’m thinking mainly of “Sort of Protest Song” on Audio of Being & “While We Were Hunting Rabbits” on Avalanche.

I like these previous songs; I like that they are over 5 minutes & are dramatic & rely on creating an atmosphere.  However, I enjoy them even better because they’re in the middle or at the end of the CD.  I can rock out & then take a moment to reflect on what I’m hearing.  This does not work for “Great Whales” & “Boy Who Could Explode” because they’re at the beginning of the CD.  If you had this on in the car, trying to get a groove on, you would get impatient.  Also, unfortunately, the orchestration is used in nearly every single song on the album.

Thankfully, “On Nights Like Tonight” brings us back to speed.  The mood changes so quickly that it feels like you’re chasing Good as he sings out “Carry me Mother Mary I’m faithless/Like Sister Theresa, canonized, faceless”.  Then he brings us to the taffy-slow chorus, which leaves you grasping for meaning as he drawls “Who’s at the helm?”

Other notable songs are “A Silent Army in the Trees”, a fearful dialogue of a soldier’s thoughts in a post-9-11 world, “Fought to Fight It”, a companion track that is easily a cousin to anything off of NIN’s Year Zero or The Slip, & “The Vancouver National Anthem”, a theme song for any city that gentrifies it’s districts at the expense of any undesirables.  Vancouver rounds out with “Empty’s Theme Park”, a clever inversion both musically & lyrically of “Last Parade”.  “Last Parade” states “The burning future’s in the mountains/All lit up, yeah you can count yours”.  “Theme Park” pleads “Bear it like you’ll never let it show/Shine the light and so never let me go”.

For me, Vancouver is a solid CD.  A little indulgent with the atmosphere building; a little skewed tempo-wise, but still a staple of my player right now.  I always seem to notice the dusk & the wane of the day when I hear Good’s music.  Something about his CDs brings my gaze to the sky & my thoughts to what I may have missed today but what I can still catch tomorrow.

 

Brave New Blog

“Somebody gave you a choice and all you do is abuse it/If God gave you a voice then use it.”  –Matthew Good, Lullaby For the New World Order

“I basically connect through this sense of fun and nostalgia.” –Jim Groom

There aren’t a lot of blogs I follow consistently.  There are my friends listed in my blogroll.  My reader occasionally updates me on new material from Noir of the Week or This American Life.  But there are really two blogs in particular that I follow not just out of curiosity but as something to aspire to.

One of these is a blog authored by Matthew Good, a Canadian musician whose songs always devastate me.  Good is extremely knowledgeable (& vocal) on various subjects from politics to mental illness to mass media.  His approach to reasoning, &, indirectly, life is one of unflinching self-awareness & constant scrutiny.  His posts, like his music, gives me a new definition of “brutally honest” every time I experience them.

I read Good’s posts for the same reason that I read books like Niels Lyhne & Barabbas, to challenge myself.  I know that I take a lot of my beliefs & assumptions for granted & those foundations need to be sounded & tested often.  I may never have the breadth of knowledge or approach the level of articulation Good has.  But the self-honesty & effort in the narrative of his blog is something to aspire to.

(Aside:  The site is http://www.matthewgood.org/.  I’m not linking to it since I’m shy about linking to a stranger’s blog.  If you decide to check it out you won’t go away whistling Dixie; Good is an easy enough person to dislike or disagree with.)

On a somewhat lighter note, the other blog I not-so-secretly admire is Jim Groom’s bavatuesdays (listed in my blogroll).  Jim was actually a key part of me even trying to blog in the first place.  He was a co-instructor with Claudia Emerson in the Online Literary Journals class I took with them.  He introduced us to WordPress & inspired a lot of us to even try out this whole blogging thing.

I could gush & tell you all the wonderful reasons why I <3 Jim Groom but I digress.  The reason I keep tabs on bavatuesdays is mainly because it’s an example of how human & complex a virtual space can become.  One post will be a technical exploration into fine-tuning a piece of code.  Another will be a discussion on noir movies.  Another will be about the availability of higher education & how technology can help or hinder that process.  In the end, bavatuesdays is this great example of how a blog can encompass the professional & the personal & make it accessible to others in a meaningful way.

(Aside: for more of Jim’s views on “connection”, click here.)

So, going into this new year, I’m going to try to approach blogging is a different way.  In a way that is open, but as a way that seeks connection to others.  In a way that is honest & self-aware, but as a means of personal integrity.  Something that is thoughtful but doesn’t take itself too seriously.  Let’s see what happens.