Deeds & Words

The Fall

Lee Pace

Cantinca Untaru

Directed by Tarsem Singh (as Tarsem)

            The Fall is all about the power of the image.  Don’t believe me?  Watch that opening sequence again.  Note how the Beethoven music wraps around each shot.  Pay attention to the trestle and the train.  Watch the light glance off the woman’s heart-shaped locket, the locket you’ll see again.

            It’s all about the image, and, like Kiss of the Spider Woman, The Adventures of Baron von Munchausen, and Don Juan DeMarco, it’s all about story-telling.

            The movie is set in 1920′s LA, in a Catholic charity hospital.  Alexandria, a little Persian immigrant girl, is recovering from a broken arm.  Because she is otherwise healthy, she has the run of the place and knows everyone from the priest and the nurses to the man who delivers the ice.  She meets Roy, a stunt man in the fledgling movie business who was injured and probably permanently paralyzed when a stunt went wrong.

            Roy starts making up stories to entertain Alexandria, and the stories play out before us in vivid, candy-coated colors, a different palette than the creamy peach, cream and olive tones of the hospital scenes.  Alexandria is a fierce editor—she doesn’t want a pirate story, she says, and the five story characters on a deserted island immediately become bandits—and soon she and Roy are collaborating, weaving characters from hospital life into the “epic” tale Roy has set.

            Alexandria is an innocent, so she is unaware of the depths of Roy’s despair, and his hidden purpose in befriending her.

            I think the movie spends about half the time in 1920′s hospital world.  These scenes evoke a time and place without the fussy attention to period detail you sometimes see.  As we watch Alexandria’s peregrinations we begin to understand more about her.  Meanwhile, Roy’s story grows increasingly darker.

            In an early scene Alexandria, who is not a Catholic, brings Roy a communion wafer she took from the chapel.  Roy asks her if she is trying to save his soul (a word five-year-old Alexandria doesn’t even know).  The question is playful but it resonates through the rest of the movie.  Souls are, in fact, at stake here.

            Tarsem, the director, is best-known for music videos, which might explain how he knew about all the fabulous locations he uses.  He also directed one of the most beautiful and most awful movies I ever sat through—The Cell, with Jennifer Lopez.  Roger Ebert described The Cell as “a Vogue photo-shoot in hell.” In The Fall, Tarsem doesn’t feel the need to junk up his intimate story with sadistic serial killers and science-fictional bodysuits.  He just shows us what happens.

            The movie is beautiful, but the relationship between Roy and Alexandria grabs us and holds us.  Pace’s work here is more layered than his turn as the magical pie-maker on Pushing Daisies, and Untaru—she is a little miracle.  Her genuineness saves the film’s sentimentality from becoming gummy.

            Days later, though, it’s the images I remember.  I remember a keyhole in a door creating a camera oscura, Alexandria’s paper mask and the mask of the blue bandit.  I remember the trestle, the train, the heart-shaped locket, and mostly I remember the elephant, swimming, swimming through the brilliant blue water as it carries our five heroes off the deserted island and into the heart of our story.

“We Republicans are back to throwing bombs from the sidelines as opposed to driving the agenda.”

Phil Musser, Republican Strategist, to Norah O’Donnell @ MSNBC

January 26, 2009

            “So I don’t think she—or my family—get that this is really what I believe.  I know she just thinks it’s kind of quaint and sweet.  Like, she’ll be on a trip for work, and we’ll be on the phone.  She’ll say, ‘I miss you so much.  You’re so far away.’ And I’ll say, ‘There is no space and no time.  I’m there with you, right now.’ And she’ll go, ‘Awww, that’s so cute!‘”

One Guy to another Guy, East-West Café.

“You never know what your history is going to be like until long after you’re gone.”

President George W. Bush, May 5, 2006

“Our challenges may be new. The instruments with which we meet them may be new. But those values upon which our success depends – hard work and honesty, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism – these things are old. These things are true. They have been the quiet force of progress throughout our history. What is demanded then is a return to these truths. What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility – a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation, and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character, than giving our all to a difficult task.

This is the price and the promise of citizenship.”

President Barack Obama, January 20,2009

“Collage can be fun and light-hearted,even if it leads to profound insights.”

Barbara Jacobsen

Living Into Art

            Get a stack of picture magazines, on any subject. . . art, nature, home, hobbies, sports, food, lifestyle.  Find a pair of scissors.  Go through the mags and tear or cut out pictures that you like.  Don’t stop to plan, think or analyze.  Just go with the images that speak to you or move you in some way.  Now get a piece of matboard or cardboard and some tape or glue.  I recommend removable two-sided tape.  Arrange the pictures in a way that appeals to you. When you have them the way you want, attach them to your board.

            This is collage.

            This is the surface of collage, anyway.

            Beneath the surface, collage is like a waking dream.  It can be a way to get information from yourself about events in your life.  For some, collage is a pre-work exercise, a warm-up before plunging into some other creative work like painting, drawing or writing.  For some, it’s a meditation, and like meditation, for some it is a spiritual practice.

            This fall I got to work with two different collage groups.  In October, I took  a collage class at Angela Center, a retreat center in Santa Rosa.  There were five of us, all women—no surprise there—including Alli, our facilitator.  Alli, a busy mom of two active kids, falls into the spiritual practice group. The Angela Center group met on two Tuesday evenings.  Alli followed the “soul collage” method and we kept our collages small; 5″by 7″.

            In December, L came from Hawaii for a visit.  She and I attended the Sonoma collage class facilitated by Barbara Jacobsen and Audrey von Hawley.  This group is the subject of the book Living Into Art, by Lindsey Whiting.  Barbara, widow of well-known Sonoma artist Ray Jacobsen, is an established artist in her own right.  We went into Barbara and Audrey’s cozy studio that smelled of rain, paper and spiced tea, and sat around a long wooden table.  There were about nine of us, all women—again, no surprise.  Barbara and Audrey have hundreds of magazines.  In addition to magazines the studio has art paper, mat boards, calendars, a paper cutter, mat cutters and a color copier.  The class lasts a little over four hours, with the last 30 minutes devoted to interpretation of the collages.  The only direction in the class comes from Audrey, who functions as a pretty non-directive time-keeper, saying, after about an hour and a half, “You could be cutting,” and, later, “Could be pasting.”

            In both groups, the entire group comments on each collage.  The focus is interpretive, not critical, except in the Sonoma group, where some participants, who are professional artists, request critique

            L created two good-sized collages.  The second one showed a house, warm, tropical colors, greens, yellows, tans and shades of orange.  Along the bottom a group of shadowy silhouettes cavorted, vaguely threatening. . . they could be dancing, or fighting.  Within the house, L created a face, pasting eyes below the line of the roof, a nose on the wall and lips above the door.  The group talked quite a bit about how your face is like your house, lived in, to some extent.

            It wasn’t until after Christmas that I remembered how L had been talking about her new across-the-street neighbor who is more or less squatting in an empty house owned by a relative of his.  He has approached L once, overly friendly and aggressive.  She said that she didn’t feel comfortable even sitting on her front porch, in case the guy was watching her.  Does the dilapidated house across the street have eyes?  Are the shadowy figures dancing, or fighting?

*

            The last collage I did at the Sonoma group I called “Welcome to the Dream Palace.” It uses a color palette I rarely play in; reds, oranges and browns.  Counting the background, there are five images.  I don’t know what it means, yet, but I know a few things.  I know the little figure at the lower left is a cheerful, grateful-dead-type skeleton, and also a memento mori, a reminder of mortality.  And there’s something about that frog.

*

            The Angela Center group decided to continue to meet.  In January, we met at KKs 1930′s bungalow in the Junior College area.  It ended up being only three of us, Alli, KK and me.  KK is undergoing cancer treatment, so it was a surprise that she would offer her house, but she is a trouper.  Before we got started collaging I admired the photos she had taken from her sabbatical to Africa, where she volunteered in a small rural village.

            We worked for about two hours and I made the collage I call “Pilgrims.”  Again, shades of red and yellow, warm, fiery colors, seem to dominate.

*

            A week or so later, I took some  images leftover from KK’s and made “Temperance.”

*

            At its most superficial, collage is play, a way to unlimber the creative mind.  For a visual artist it’s a good way to practice up on color and composition.  For all of us, if we chose, it can be a dipper of water from a deeper well.

If you didn’t see Dr Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog on the internet, you should get it from Netflix now.  Right now. 

This is the only DVD I’ve ever seen where the viewer has to watch the FBI warning because it’s part of the production.

            This project—a three-act mini-movie that showed on the internet—was created by Joss Whedon and completed during the 2008 writers’ strike.  Neil Patrick Harris plays Dr. Horrible, a super-villain wannabe who dreams of two things; acceptance into the Evil League of Evil, and the love of his secret laundry-day crush Penny.  His dreams are routinely stomped by his nemesis, the superhero Captain Hammer.  Hammer is overplayed perfectly by Nathan Fillion.

            Because it’s Whedon (and we all know about his secret addiction) it’s a musical, and because it’s Whedon, it goes from hilarious to heartbreaking in zero-point-four seconds. Because it’s Whedon, it’s good, funny and very weird.

            And Neil Patrick Harris can really sing.

            Sonoma County has a Charles Schultz airport, and, much more importantly, a Charles Schultz museum.  This little museum one of those treasures that is in your neighborhood, that you take  for granted because you’re not a tourist.

            If you read Brian Fies’s blog you know about the museum because he has mentioned it several times.  The museum hosts many events with writers, celebrities and cartoonists.  Coming up at the end of the month, they’re going to have astronauts! Unfortunately, that event filled up before I became a member, so I won’t get to see them this time, although they may come back in the summer.

            Last Sunday I went to the museum, mainly to see the wonderful Beethoven exhibit they had.  I had a great time!  The place is not large, but they pack in quite a lot. On the second floor they’d created a replica of Schultz’s studio.; and there’s a “strip gallery” that rotates old Peanuts strips.  In the grand gallery is an amazing tile mural.

            Charles Schultz gave the world the Peanuts gang, the comic strip, the TV specials, and a musical called “You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown.”  He gave Sonoma County much more than that, quietly.  The family made many donations to charities and other causes through their church.  They were big in Boy Scouts, and they built the ice arena that became the anchor of Sonoma County’s ice skating program.  And now they’ve provided locals and visitors alike with a wonderful museum and educational center.  They don’t just have exhibits about Schultz or Peanuts-themed things—there’s an art room for kids, a Mommy and Me Monday program, cartoonists and writers in residence. The cost at the door is $8 for an adult.  If you become a member, you have reciprocity with many other museums in San Francisco and Sacramento.  There’s even a labyrinth in the shape of Snoopy’s head.  Okay, as labyrinths go it’s not the most imposing, but c’mon!  It’s Snoopy! And, after you wear yourself out the at the museum, go over to the Warm Puppy café in the ice arena, and have a tuna sandwich and iced tea, just like Schultz did almost every day for lunch when he was drawing Peanuts in what used to be his studio.

            “The natural form of the hallways and chambers seemed to be roughly hexagonal, or sometimes curved, like a vast snail shell; or sometimes complex and unfolding, like a fern.  An elaborate machinery extruded and snapped tightly into place. A mesh of bars and wires and gears and metal teeth.  The Mountain, whatever it was, was slowly sloughing off the shabby domestic façade Shay-the-first-and-eldest had hung on it.  An unearthly light shone from behind the walls.  Arjun had a sense of some impossible vision battering against the form of the machine.  The masks were coming off.  The bars were breaking and the prisoners were ready to be released.  He awaited the revelation.”

Gears of the City

Felix Gilman

            Of course it would have to be liberal sock puppets on the attack.  Republican sock puppets would just hire mercenaries. 

            (I can’t take credit for that title, much as I would love to.  Some conservative pundit used it first.)

The story is that the political fund-raising website for Sarah Palin, Team Sarah, posted many nasty and racist comments about the President-elect.  The Huffington Post wrote about this.  The Huffington Post blogger included some of the Team Sarah comments in her post.  They were. . .unpleasant.

Apparently, the Team Sarah site does not moderate its comments, since no steps were taken to remove the offensive racist comments until the issue broke on Huffington Post.

            The conservatives soon circulated a story that liberals had created false internet personae, (hence, “sock puppets”) joined the Team Sarah site—which, as you might expect, is Members Only and very ex-cluu-sive– and written the nasty postings themselves.  One social conservative blogger pointed to a website called “Something Awful” as the source of the prank. He also called for “principled liberals everywhere” to deplore this bad behavior.

            Well, Something Awful is a satire site, not a political site.  Their motto is, “The internet makes you stupid.”  Based on the one-minute tour I took of the site, I would say they are aptly named, and they’ve got a whole QED thing going on with the motto. You look at the site and can’t help picturing over-caffeinated post-adolescent males without enough meaningful tasks in their lives.  That’s my opinion, anyway.

If the people at Something Awful really did perpetrate this hoax, then I am outraged.  I am indignant.  I am angry.  Why?  Because I’m trying to get my own sock puppet on Team Sarah, and they’ve probably messed it up for me! It’s bad enough that I had to go to AOL and spend at least four minutes coming up with an e-mail name that hadn’t been used.  Then I had to go to Team Sarah and get grilled with hearts-and-minds questions like, “Do you just love Sarah or what?  What do you like best about her?”  and, “What’s the best phone number for us to reach you?”  Then, a day after I do this, you kids get caught with the metaphorical spray-paint, and they deny my request for membership. Thanks. Thanks a lot.  Don’t expect me to be making a latte-mocha run for you guys any time in the near future!

The Daily Writer: 366 Meditations to Cultivate a Productive and Meaningful Writing Life

Fred White

Writer’s Digest Books

I got this book for Christmas.  Fred White, a Ph.d in English who teaches at Santa Clara University, has created a Writer’s Book of Days.

            In his introduction, White says, “Daily meditations are an effective way or reminding you of the care and quality that must go into a writing project.  Singular flashes of inspiration do not do the trick; instead a writer needs to sustain a heightened awareness that must be nurtured from day to day.”  (White, p.1)

            For each day of the year, including Leap Day, White starts with a two or three-paragraph meditation on an aspect of writing, followed by an exercise.  I like how White mixes things up with the exercises.  Some, like writing a character inventory and then a scene using dialogue and action to reveal the characteristics, are conventional, some address revision and rewriting, and others range farther afield.  Take January 5:  “Think back to a childhood experience with one special book. . .How did it affect you? . . .What did you learn? . . . Read the book again so that you may be reminded of its magical effect on you,” or February 10: “Allow yourself a half hour of day-dreaming every day.”

            Each page includes a section called For Further Reflection, on the same topic.

            The book is trade paperback size, fitting easily into a briefcase or tote bag. It can be the book you carry with you and dip into while you’re waiting at the dentist or even in line at your coffee place.  It helps if you do the exercises, but the design of the book means that if you miss one, or skip one, you can always do it next year, or honestly, any time you want.

            White’s reverence, or even love, for writing becomes immediately apparent.  This is not a textbook or a cookbook.  White is interested in the reasons we write. He wants us to do a good job, and be thoughtful about why we engage in this strange and often thankless activity.  He covers territory long ago staked out by Julia Cameron and Natalie Goldberg, but transcends the “gimmicks”—writer’s pages! Timed writings!—attached to those two celebrity how-toers.  Don’t just write three pages a day, he seems to be saying, but think about why you’re writing them.  Think about why they matter. . .and if they matter, give then the attention they need in order to be the best three pages you can write.