Category Archives: writing

Living in Fear

Posted on by

I’ve made a lot of decisions as of late – or they have been made for me – that have brought me to here. And so I now live in fear. Not so much of the world and death and all of that but of the person I have become and what I am to do now.

Angoraphobia is the fear of open spaces and crowds – the Italian author Alessandro Manzoni famously suffered from this – and that is what I feel like I have, not of a physical space but what is now in my head.

I have sought to find something that means something outside of sex and booze and have put myself on a quixotic quest of words to make sense of that. There are no editors, agents or publishers out there as of yet that see my prose as anything beyond sophomoric and unsellable. And that is hard. And I guess the point.

And so I will fly to Copenhagen from here (JFK, if you haven’t guessed) and on to Ilulissat where I either affirm my sophomoric drunken self or write something of worth. Or both. It is to be the end of the trilogy, a book that has been sitting in wait for some years, the arrival to another place. Not here.

This is where my mind is most often. Not here, this godforsaken place where we’ve plunged into the digital wasteland, where words and thought mean no more, but out there, another place, where others have gathered to start the experiment again and find what the hell is so precious about a species fucking hell-bent on self-destruction.

And so, yeah, I live in fear. That is, when I bother to think.

Our Unspoken Selves

Posted on by

Our history is unspoken, a nightmare only the subconscious knows. Human nature is deceit, the oxymoron of how we honestly treat one another and what we pretend for ourselves. From now on, we will sleep no more.

There has never been a record of truth. That was the epiphany of the Nazis. It’s only getting worse now, where the shadows become real, and the nightmare is complete. Because, as horrible as they are, you and I are the very same.

Ari Aster’s Mommy Issues

Posted on by

Ari Aster’s Beau is Afraid tries to be Charlie Kaufman’s Synecdoche but ends up more Darren Aronofsky’s Mother, an exhausting and unintelligible portrayal of deep psychological damage. There is some very good stuff, including then many 180-degree pans, the match-cut transitions, the blue paint overdose scene and the fantastic animated sequence.

But there is much more of the very bad stuff – countless scenes tediously rendered – and very stupid stuff too, including the inane finale and, yes, the penis monster.

After the stellar work of Hereditary ($10 million budget) and Midsommar ($9 million), this is what Aster does with $25 million? Yikes. What’s next? Courtside seats for the Knicks?

Top and Bottom Five Coen Brothers Films

Posted on by

Maybe I’m doing this blog out of spite. Against whom, I don’t know. Not the Coens. Why would they care? More likely against the peons who profess their love for The Big Lebowski, which isn’t a good film at all. The Bottom Five Coen Films: Intolerable Cruelty, The Lady Killers, Hail Caesar, True Grit, and, yes, The Big Lebowski.

How is it possible that these films were made by the same guys who made (Top Five): No Country For Old Men, Raising Arizona, Hudsucker Proxy, Fargo and O Brother Where Art Thou? And by the way, why do people capitalize the ‘b’ in Coen brothers? That’s wrong too.

I Have An Expiration Date Too

Posted on by

I’ve been hearing the rabbits screaming at night. Have you been hearing that? I was told that it’s just the dogs killing them.

As soon as the veil goes down, that’s when I thought I would know something. But then it wasn’t that. I was just pretending, and that was it.

I’m here. I think I know that. I mean, I look back and remember most things. But I remember who I thought I would be. And I’m good. Almost.

We Have an Expiration Date

Posted on by

I have blogged on my concerns for the future as of late, a dread that worsens daily. Henri Charriere concludes his opus of astonishing escapes, Papillon, with the following thought: We have too much technological progress, life is too hectic, and our society has one goal: to invent still more technological marvels to make life easier and better.

The craving for every scientific discovery breeds a hunger for greater comfort and the constant struggle to achieve it. All that kills the soul, kills compassion, understanding and nobility. It leaves no time for caring what happens to other people.

Charriere wrote those words in 1970, 53 years ago. And how much worse is it now? And how much worse is it going to get? (HInt: Much fucking worse.)

Our Wrong Track World

Posted on by

I’m not a Royalist nor a Conservative, Republican or Democrat. These systems of rule have all been garbage. Their argument is fatuous: “Better than the alternatives imposed in Russia, the Middle East and developing nations.”

The problem is that, as flawed as it’s been to have old white men dictating misogynistic racist doctrines, the chaotic track we’re spinning down now looks an uglier thing. The lunatics are taking over the asylum – or at least they think they have – and they don’t give a damn about anything except personal monetization.

Libertarians and Anarchists will transform back into Nazis and Fascists because that’s what they are. Empathy dies. Hubris blooms. Terror reigns. Every being for itself. Fuck the rest.

Get me on the starship now.

Fuck Pedagogy: Another Scene Purged

Posted on by

Maggie arrived that year, the new head of curriculum planning. She loved meetings because there was food and idle chitchat. Maggie told me that she was very excited about my plan to take a group of teachers to the Museum of the Moving Image (MOMI) for workshops on film and how to apply media to a variety of curriculae. I enlisted a dozen teachers and was making final arrangements when Maggie emailed me: You will have to cancel. Next time! M.

I went to her office, which could have been a good idea but was not. “You can’t cancel now, Maggie.”

“Well, I am afraid that I already have.”

“You should have spoken to me. I’ve made all of the arrangements.”

“Next time.”

“I’ve booked our workshop. It’s done.”

“Be that as it may, the plans have changed.”

“It’s a reflection of complete incompetence, Maggie.”

She stared back, mouth open, as I left. At least I had stood my ground. That was the thought in my head. Stupid me.

Writing Process: Restructuring “Paint”

Posted on by

I was never one for the story arc. While well-structured rising action, climax and denouement are certainly to be admired, the essence of story has little to do with craft.

Part Three of The Buzz Trilogy follows the rapid dissolution of the eponymous character.

The problem with much of story-telling is a blind adherence to the clever raconteur. In other words, it isn’t what the story is about as much as how it is told. “Stories” on social media have brought that to the fore, demonstrating that immediate gratification isn’t that gratifying in the end.

It’s the characters and dialogue, the little glimpses of what’s what, a truth of sorts, that makes a story worth anything. So what if the start is all wrong, the sequence of memories of the dead father askew, there is no flow and Davis is a jerk?

Yeah, back to the drawing board.

Who I say I think I am

Posted on by

I try to think about who I am and what I know, but I don’t know what any of that means. It’s a thing off in the distance, someplace that I thought I might have been, even convinced myself of that, and have now lost.

I know what I want to be. No, that’s a lie too. Even if I said that I knew what I want, or that I thought that I knew that, I wouldn’t. The more I think that I know the who and what, the more I’m further from it because I think that. It’s a façade.

Confidence is the thing, believing in those lies is what makes you that you in you. The deeper you get, the further you are from the same. A gosh-darned paradox!

And so…something else. Drugs and whores! No confusion there. Or all confusion. Signs of it all gone awry. At least it’s not a façade. Or the façade of facades. Good copy anyway.