Synchronicity

Synchronicity is the belief that when apparently coincidental occurrences happen to an individual they are actually the result of that individual’s thoughts and words and actions manifesting in unexpected ways.

Think of it as a diet form of destiny. It’s not that our path is laid out before us and we have no choice but to follow it, but rather that the path we go looking for is the one we are likely to find. I wish I could say that this were a simple equation: that the more thought one put into planning the future the more well-thought-out that person’s future would be. Instead there is always a gap: a delay between where we want to go and how we think we should get there.

For the past few days I have been in California looking for a place to call home in the next few months. It isn’t easy to find places that are available and it isn’t easy to nail one down even when you do find it (I already submitted one application). All day I spent driving up and down the neighborhood streets looking for For Rent signs. All day I spent driving up and down streets waiting to feel that sensation that I would be able to call this  place home, that I would drive down this  street every day for the next year or more.  The more I went looking the more I began to feel as if I were circling a target without knowing what I was aiming for and without knowing that I was missing it by the narrowest of threads.

I think the hardest part is that I don’t have a good sense of what “home” is going to mean when I get out here. I still catch myself sometimes thinking “Am I really doing this? Am I really moving to California? Am I really going to become a Californian?” And a part of me isn’t sure it wants to commit to this- at least not forever and ever. A part of me doesn’t want to stop being a Chicagoan; no matter what my ambitions are or where my career takes me. I think, perhaps, this part of me is holding me back and preventing me from seeing what is right in front of my face.

Tomorrow I will try again because that is the only reason I am here and it is the only thing I know how to do. I feel certain that an answer will present itself and I need only keep my goal in mind in order to make it happen.

Growing Up

When you’re young and looking up into the world of Grown Ups it is hard to understand why Grown Ups don’t have a better understanding of Kids. After all: all Grown Ups were once Kids, without exception. It is hard to understand why Grown Ups worry so much, or struggle, or are so unhappy when they get paid for their work and can choose if they want to go to work each day and can stay up late and eat whatever they want even if it’ll spoil their dinner. If a Kid asks a Grown Up about these things the Grown Up tries to explain about responsibility and making good choices and experience, but the explanations seem to fall short. They don’t seem to tell the whole story. The Kid understands, but imperfectly. The Grown Up tells the Kid: “You’ll understand when you’re older.”

You’ll understand when you’re older.

The thing no one tells you about growing up is that you don’t just get bigger and stronger and more responsible: you get smaller too. When you are a Kid you are all things: a fireman, a ballerina, the president of the United States; you can build an entire city in one day or fly a spaceship to another planet or throw an elaborate party full of royalty and if you get bored of being someone or doing something you can just change and be someone else for a while. No one tells you that when you grow up you only get to be one thing. No one tells you that when you grow up it takes an extraordinary amount of work and time to accomplish extraordinarily little. Little by little we lose pieces of ourselves: we discover we’re not brave enough to be a fireman, not lithe enough to dance ballet, not well connected enough to be the president… We discover who we are by discovering who we’re not and once you take away all the could’ves and should’ves and would’ves you gradually come to realize that there isn’t much left.

You tell yourself that it’s OK: there’s no shame in being diminished but good, small but strong, humble but hard working. You believe it too, because it is true. But there is still a part of every Grown Up that wants to move mountains and build cities and fly on silver wings and can’t understand what is preventing them from doing so.

“Where did this gap come from?” You wonder, “How did my dreams get to be so far away?”

You wonder if you could still reach them. Maybe you even try to reach them and discover they are always just beyond your fingertips. The gap below you seems to become wider and deeper beneath your feet; filled up with worry and doubt and procrastination. Not everyone makes it to the other side. Not everyone tries. And not everyone wants to see you reach the other side if they can’t do it themselves. They lob scorn and doubts and endless, unproductive tasks at you trying to weigh you down in a thousand small ways to make you fall short. To be a Grown Up is to be in free-fall.

When you’re young and looking up into the world of Grown Ups you can’t see this leap of faith; you see only flight. When you’re young you stand on dreams as solid and real as the ground beneath your feet. You are so weighed down by your own potential that it doesn’t occur to you that it could be any other way. You wonder when you too will be able to fly. You wonder where your wings will take you and you don’t think about where you might land. You figure, you can always take off again.

I wish someone had explained to me that someday I would find myself falling and that it would look a lot like flying.

The Wrong Cheese

Whilst studying abroad in Scotland I observed one of the other girls in my building preparing a dish of pasta for dinner. In all ways it was exactly the same as any plate of pasta that I would have prepared myself: cooked noodles,  tomato sauce on top. Then she grated some cheese over the top and I noticed it was cheddar.

“She used the wrong cheese!” I told my dad on the phone when I called home that week. “She put cheddar cheese on a plate of pasta!”

“Who says it’s the wrong cheese?” He replied.

I said “But you’re supposed to put parmesan cheese on pasta.” In my whole life to that point I’d never seen anybody do differently. Except maybe for mozzarella on lasagna but I didn’t think that counted. I’d certainly never seen anybody put cheddar on their pasta before.

“Cheddar is a British cheese. You’re in Britain. It’s not the wrong cheese it’s just not Italian.” He said.

This was a revelation to me. Just because I’d only ever seen it done one way didn’t mean that was the only way to do it. Pasta with parmesan cheese on top isn’t right, just delicious. Pasta with cheddar cheese on top isn’t wrong, just differently delicious.

There is no wrong cheese.

Library vs Marquee: Is The Book Better Than The Movie?

In the span of the last month or so I had the privilege of doing quite a lot of reading. It is a rare moment when I am able to read a book cover to cover, so when the opportunity presents itself I occasionally get… giddy. One book turns into a second; a second turns into a third until I’m consuming books like Cookie Monster in the Nabisco factory. Omnomnomnomnom!

In my latest reading binge indulgence I began to see a theme in the books I chose; can you guess it by their titles?

• We Bought A Zoo
• Slumdog Millionaire
• Water For Elephants
• The Invention of Hugo Cabret
• The Hunger Games

If you recognize more of these titles from the movie theatre marquee than the local library you’re probably not alone: all of these books have been turned into feature films.

Now, as a filmmaker myself I don’t personally believe that any book is intrinsically better than any movie or vice versa: it’s an apples-to-oranges comparison. I recently happened upon a blog called Matt And The Art of Motion Pictures that addressed this very topic in a post called “Critiquing a Film: Should the Book Also Matter?.” Matt contends that it isn’t necessary to read the book in order to decide whether or not a film is well done or not, but that if one wants to critique the story or characters of a movie that is based on a book then it is important to consider the source material (i.e. the book) when making statements about the film. This is a fair opinion and neatly straddles the question of how anyone could ever keep up with the amount of work that would be necessary to read the book for every film ever made in order to decide if the movie was “good”.

Telling a story through film and telling a story through writing are very different art forms that can occasionally express the same story. To compare them is to compare a musical recording to sheet music: it expresses the same symphony and it is not always necessary for a music aficionado to know how to interpret the actual notes on a page in order to be moved by them. Just like a musician, a filmmaker interprets the written story and presents us with a work based on that interpretation.

This is where films go wrong.

Yes, yes, you can argue that there is no right or wrong interpretation for a written work since it is an opinion based process. It is, however, possible to completely miss the point of the original story in the course of interpreting it. My favorite example of this is the graphic-novel-cum-movie “V for Vendetta.” I loved LURVED the graphic novel. I hated the movie. The graphic novel tells us a story about the cycle of revolution about an average woman learning to stand up to an unjust system in order to overthrow it. The movie tells us a weirdo love story about a woman who falls in love with a revolutionary who treats her badly and then gets her to blow stuff up. Dear Hollywood: it is not always appropriate for the “romantic lead” to actually be romantic. Ew.

But it is also where films can go right. SO right.

A book can be brilliant. The movie can still be better. When a movie takes a book and finds those golden threads of truth in it and weave them into a new and brilliant tapestry; this is when a film can go beyond its source material and become a masterpiece on its own. Matt uses the film “Hugo”, based on the book “The Invention of Hugo Cabret” by Brian Selznick,  as his example of this, so I will too. “The Invention of Hugo Cabret” is a brilliant book. “Hugo” is a superb movie. They don’t follow one another with complete accuracy- there are characters in the movie that aren’t in the book and there are characters in the book that aren’t in the movie. The book (which is also part graphic novel) is an exercise in subtle tones and moment-to-moment storytelling. The movie is an exercise in visual novelty (in THREEDEE!!!!! *jazz hands*) and action-to-action storytelling. But at the end of the day both the film and the book tell the same story: a boy finding a place to fit in by helping an old man remember his purpose; and both the film and the book make this message real and meaningful in the real world.

So to recap:

The Invention of Hugo Cabret: Worth Taking A Look At

Hugo: Worth Taking A Look At

Guy Fawkes, Mentor to Revolutionaries

Guy Fawkes: The Bad Choice from Match.com

So is the book better than the movie or is the movie better than the book? Apples to Oranges. Is it important to consider the book when critiquing a film? If you are concerned with how true the filmmaker stayed to the original story’s themes, then yes. If you feel the film is good on its own merits then no.

2011 In Review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

A New York City subway train holds 1,200 people. This blog was viewed about 3,800 times in 2011. If it were a NYC subway train, it would take about 3 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

The Christmas Spirit

So, yes, I got a camera for Christmas… why do you ask?

What? Oh, these? They’re just some photos that I took… yes I took some nice ones too, but these really speak to the spirit of Christmas is our household.

Behold! I say, I give you Christmas 2011 as interpreted by internet memes:

The Handlebar Mustache

The Photobomb

Ninjas

Happy Cracker is Happy

Duckface and Derp: Together At Last

Gimmie, Gimmie

‘Tis the season for giving, when we remember to be charitable to our fellow mankind and perhaps be a bit more generous about spreading around our own abundance from the previous year. It should come as no surprise, then, that this time of year is also the time for many charitable organizations to put together one last year end pledge drive or donation campaign. In general I find this annoying but forgivable: I’ve done my fair share of fundraising for a charitable organization or two *cough-bluedamenpictures-ahem* and the whole point of the season is to think about giving so chances of actually getting a donation are pretty good.

However, there is a down side of so much spirit-of-giving in the Christmas season: donor fatigue. I like to think that a person’s charitable sensibilities are a substance like ice; at first the point is to make it melt just a little bit so that you can win just a little bit of their liquid assets- but if you go back to the well too many times it gets brittle and you can very easily find yourself in over your head. You can only ask people for money so many times before annoyance sets in to the tune of: “I just gave to the Salvation Army, the guy on the street corner, a local theatre company, a veterans organization, money for the Red Cross and an alumni contribution- and you want more?!”

It was an alumni contribution request that finally cracked my ice this season. Recently I received a “Report of Giving” which is a thing to behold: a slick tome cataloging the names of each and every donor, partner, trustee, scholarship and bequeath on full sized, glossy, magazine stock. It weighed just shy of one pound and was fully 92 pages long, not counting the cover, and featured articles and photographs designed, I assume, to reassure us that our money was being Well Spent. My first thought was: “how much did that booklet cost?”

Now, I don’t know a lot about publishing, but I know that that 46 full color, double sided, spreads on heavyweight glossy stock paper costs a goodly sum. Multiply that by the number of copies needed for the thousands of donors who would receive one (presumably in order to find their own names in it- that was what I did) and adding on the cost of design, layout, binding, shipping (first to the university and later to the alumni recipients) and THEN assuming that copies would also be sent to alumni who had never donated in the hopes of courting their favor… well, I think you can see where I’m going with this.

I’m a big believer in supporting my Alma Mater. I believe it is part of being a responsible, dutiful, alum to contribute to the educational well-being of successive generations of students in a financial way. On top of that I believe that it is part of being a responsible, dutiful American to voluntarily donate a portion of my income to charitable organizations for the greater good. So periodically I will send a contribution to the university completely unsolicited. But, being of very moderate means, my donations have always been very moderate. In recent years they have become very modest indeed due to circumstances that are probably common enough that they don’t require elaboration.

Now, as someone who makes such a small contribution I’m sure I don’t have much sway in the way the larger pool of money is spent, but I like to believe that it is being spent wisely. I like to imagine that it contributes in some small way to the physical campus or to a particular student’s academic future or maybe even to the reputation of the school for academic excellence. I don’t like to imagine that my contribution was eaten up with the vanity printing of a year-end report that will end up in the trash.

I don’t care that my name is printed in it: if I were given the choice between seeing my name in print on some donor list or having my money go to the school in a more meaningful way than the production of a self-impressed magazine I’d rather anonymously slip twenty dollar bills under dorm room doors. Even if they are spent on Easy Mac and beer they will make a bigger difference in a student’s life.

This has turned into a bit of a tirade, but my point is that as a contributor to a charitable organization- and this applies to ANY charitable organization- I want to believe that the money has been well spent. Unless the point of your organization is to create stylish mailings or coordinating extravagant events then I don’t find them very good tools for self promotion. If you have enough money for gloss stock then you have quite enough money for building maintenance. If you have enough money to print 92 pages of donor names then you have enough money to buy books for the library collection. Stop using  my money to ask me for more money.

The Artist’s Dilemma

It occurred to me the other day that, in general, the life of a successful artist falls into one of two categories:

A life spent in obscurity and poverty only to be immortalized posthumously as the creator of magnificent and priceless works.

(or)

Phenomenal (or, at least, notable) commercial success, fame, and/or fortune in life descending into relative oblivion after death.

Obviously there are exceptions to this as there are exceptions to every rule (Rubens, Dickens, Handel), but in general it seems as though there isn’t much middle ground. Assuming, for the sake of argument, that the “rule” is that all successful artists fall into one of these two categories, and that these destinies are mutually exclusive this leaves us with the Artists Dilemma: Does one choose to build a body of work because it is innovative and meaningful- even though it does not bring any recognition or income? Or does one choose to build a body of work that people seem to like and that can provide a living even though it doesn’t speak much to the larger themes of the human condition?

On one hand you have an artist who creates work like no one has ever seen before: an artist like VanGogh in his time. Here is work that will change the way artists work and will change the way that people see. Here is an artist who never sold a single painting during his lifetime. I daresay that most artists make the decision to become artists in the hopes of having this kind of impact on the art world. This is the kind of artist that is inspiring and regarded as being a visionary genius. But this is also the kind of artist who eats paint and lives on the goodwill of family and friends and fails to have meaningful relationships and eventually cuts off an ear.

Who can blame him? I can’t. I don’t think I could go through my whole life without ever getting recognition for my work or without ever feeling like anyone else cared about what I was trying to do. I like to think I’m above merely working for the approval of others, but I’m not: the approval of others means a lot to me. Besides, there are no guarantees: if no one seems to care about my work while I’m alive how can I be sure they will care about it after I am gone? What artist is so convinced of their own future success that they never need to see it with their own eyes?

By contrast, though, there are artists who do quite well in life. Their art makes money and goes well with the couch, or sells a product, or makes people happy in some way. Their name might even become a bit of a brand: there is recognition for their work. And the work itself can be very good: the quality of popular art is just as important as the quality of so-called “fine” art. The only difference is the content. This is the kind of artist that is savvy and who can recognize the needs of the audience. This is the kind of artist that recognizes that art imitates life and life involves meeting a series of responsibilities like socializing with the neighbors and making sure there are enough groceries in the fridge and that maybe it’s OK to be an artist and to be happy a little bit along the way.

Personally I can’t fault this kind of artist either: I like to consider myself a pragmatist who recognizes that life is about more than just ideas. And I like my creature comforts as much as the next girl. I like to think that my work is meaningful no matter why I create it, but it’s not. I’ve created work that has no value to me personally for the sake of making money and I’ve created works with no apparent meaning just because people seem to like them. But once again there are no guarantees: if I spend my whole life doing work that pays the bills how can I be sure that I will find the time to create anything notable out of it. What if my greatest work is an advertisement for toothpaste or a painting of kittens featured on a motivational poster? What artist wants to be remembered for this kind of work?

So we have The Artists’ Dilemma. It isn’t a question that has an answer, but rather a continuum on which an artist’s life fluctuates between the two extremes and in the end the balance of one’s work decides what kind of artist one is. It’s not an easy to deal with this kind of uncertainty, but no one becomes an artist because it is a “sure thing” anyway.

OCD Poetry: Shakespeare Edition

Original (Disorganized):

Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow,

Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,

and all our yesterdays have lighted fools

the way to dusty death.

Out, out brief candle!

Life is but a walking shadow,

A poor player who struts and frets

his moment upon the stage,

And then is heard no more.

It is a tale told by an idiot,

Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Revised (Organized):

Candle, Day, Day, Death, Fools, Fury, Idiot, Life, Moment, Nothing, Pace, Player, Shadow, Sound, Stage, Tale, Tomorrow, Tomorrow, Tomorrow, Way, Yesterdays

By, From, In, Of, Out, Out, To, To, To, Upon

Creeps, Frets, Heard, Is, Is, Is, Lighted, Struts, Told

Brief, Dusty, Full, More, No, Petty, Poor

And, And, And, And, And, And, But

His, It, Our, Who

A, A, A, An

All, The, The

Signifying, Walking

Have

Here’s To You, Kater Gordon

I’ve taken to watching “Mad Men” over my lunch break at work. It’s an excellent show but being somewhat behind the times I’m only on the second season. Today, as I tuned in for my usual episode I happened to glimpse the name “Kater Gordon” in the writing credits. The name didn’t so much ring a bell as it did slow down time and send me back ten years. (And they say that time travel is just science fiction.)

Kater Gordon?

The Kater Gordon of the red hair and the freckled shoulders?

Kater Gordon of the wardrobe crew of the Heritage Repertory Theatre in Virginia?

I knew her. I worked with her. At least I thought I did. I looked her up on IMDb just to be sure. Yes, it was her. The one and only Kater Gordon.

Bitch got an Emmy.

Here was someone my age, who was in exactly the same place that I was ten years ago, writing for “Mad Men”; the Emmy Award winning, much imitated “Mad Men”.

Bitch got an Emmy!

What have I done with my life lately? Here’s me still struggling to finish a few haphazard short films and piece together a feature on a budget of peanut butter and goodwill all while working a day job. Here’s me still treading the same ground, trying to figure out the next baby-step, still trying to make something meaningful enough that people will notice it. And here’s Kater making the rest of us look bad.

The rest of my day was made up of variations on this theme. My curiosity warred with my pride. When I couldn’t stand it anymore I gave up and Googled her name to learn more.

And learn more I did.

Sure, she got an Emmy, and then also got fired. They called her rise meteoric; an apt choice of words since meteors mostly fall down in a blaze of glory.  The fallout wasn’t pretty. Emmy? Schmemmy: there was scandal to be had. I think the nicest of the speculations theorized she was fired for treading on someone’s ego. The larger consensus thought she’s slept with the boss. The articles were all from October 11, 2009. I tried to find some later articles to see if there was any follow up to the matter but once the news broke it was just as quickly forgotten about. Evidence didn’t seem to be important. Follow up was not a priority. I concluded it was none of my business, put my crazy-eyes back in my head, enjoyed a moment of schadenfreude (I’m not proud of it, but I’m not too proud to admit it either), and got over it.

Whatever else went on behind the scenes (notmybusiness) Kater Gordon inspires me.  After all, she’s making it happen and getting recognition. I’m just sitting on my ass and whining. If I’m just going to be all talk then I don’t deserve to be jealous, because I should stop wasting my time whining and be out there making things happen too.

Bitch got an Emmy: maybe I need to be reminded of that so I can stop procrastinating and get back to work.  So here’s to you Kater Gordon, whatever your struggle may be. For what it’s worth, I’m still jealous of you but you’re inspiring me to do great things.