Yellow Ostrich, Leonard Cohen, and The Timeless Search For Meaning

A part of me knows the foolishness of categorization, the superficiality of it all. We impose categories to create order, or for the sake of comparison, but we all know, that when we say x artist is similar to y artist we do both a disservice on some deep level. (The comparison of the Tallest Man on Earth to Dylan is both truly fitting, but plainly silly for too many reasons to enumerate here.) We fail as writers when we fall back on the need to contextualize, because contextualization, though true, always saps an artist of their singularity. But we cannot help ourselves. Our minds naturally create connections, or build compare contrast charts in our heads.

Not that any of this matters, per se, but I find it interesting because so many of our cultural critics rely on this tool, contextualization, or comparison when evaluating anything. Rarely do we use our language to try to overcome the boundaries of language, and who can blame them? Regardless all of this abstract wanderings, these ideas serve as an unnecessarily elaborate way of saying that in no way do I actually think that Alex Schaaf of Yellow Ostrich and Leonard Cohen belong in any of the same categories. However, I do find it interesting to think about these two talents, both hitting separate peaks at the opposite ends of their career at similar times. Leonard Cohen, rightfully so, needs less of an introduction, so allow me to introduce to you the prolific and talented Alex Schaaf. Native of Wisconsin, Schaaf started his musical career in the band Chairs and in his room with a bunch of machines, it seems. Though many lament the Internet for its proliferation of information, almost creating a storm of information that we need to sift through day in and day out, where websites solely work through winnowing information for other people, this overflow also allows us to track each miniscule step of an artist, which in the case of Schaaf is a fascinating endeavor to experience. Though clearly far from achieving anything in the way of his full potential, Schaaf has grown and evolved from a precociously talented teenager, capable of crafting gorgeous layers of song with just his voice, a guitar, and some sound machines, into a poetic writer of fully realized studio songs, still with his signature vocal loops, but now with a band to collaborate with. His first single off his upcoming album Strange Land, Marathon Runner serves as a great evidence of his place as an artist, as does Cohen’s first song of his new album, Old Ideas, Going home. Here are the lyrics and music to both. First, Marathon Runner, then Going Home.

listen here:
http://soundcloud.com/yellow-ostrich/marathon-runner
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/culture/2012/01/leonard-cohens-going-home-new-song.html

Marathon Runner

When I was a boy of seventeen, I know it's mean, but I I told my friend to give up on her dreams, she hated me, but I I knew that dreams were for the best of us, not for the rest of us, and I I didn't want to share with anyone

I need a way to sing the greatest dance, and make them laugh,
I could win the wars, or lose the battles too, whichever's true
I can live in other people's lives -
I CAN'T STOP PUTTING ON OTHER PEOPLE'S CLOTHES
I love them 'til I leave

I am a marathon runner and my legs are sore and I'm anxious to see what I'm running for I am a hot air balloon on a sailboat I would make this my home if I'd learned to float
So take my treasures, take my earthly life, I'll try to cry,
I will live without the things I love the best
So hold them to your chest
I will lose my faces, lose my stolen wigs, the heads of kings
I will run until I know what to believe

Going Home

I love to speak with Leonard
He’s a sportsman and a shepherd
He’s a lazy bastard
Living in a suit

But he does say what I tell him
Even though it isn’t welcome
He will never have the freedom
To refuse

He will speak these words of wisdom
Like a sage, a man of vision
Though he knows he’s really nothing
But the brief elaboration of a tube

Going home
Without my sorrow
Going home
Sometime tomorrow
To where it’s better
Than before

Going home
Without my burden
Going home
Behind the curtain
Going home
Without the costume
That I wore

He wants to write a love song
An anthem of forgiving
A manual for living with defeat

A cry above the suffering
A sacrifice recovering
But that isn’t what I want him to complete

I want to make him certain
That he doesn’t have a burden
That he doesn’t need a vision

That he only has permission
To do my instant bidding
That is to SAY what I have told him
To repeat

In a sense, I find it fascinating, that though at the opposite spectrum of their careers, both speak about movement, about home, about finding a place, but as expected, one speaks in a playful style of irony, riddles, mysteries, and a resigned sense of accomplishment that only the wisdom of years can bestow, (True, even the Cohen of 17 wrote gnomic poetry, but sometimes it still feels precocious or unearned, incommensurate to his life experience, ) while the younger artist: hungry, a bit desperate, restless, writes and sings without glibness, with a genuine desire to find his place, to run, despite the aches and pains, to finally find something to actually run for. In both we find hope, but in the Marathon Runner, we find the hope of youth, seeing a world exploding with the potential of choice while in Going home, we find the hope of concrete expectations, and the wisdom of acceptance. Stylistically, they are both poems to the self, meditations on persona that double as conversations.

The music reinforces the different stages of the artists self exploration: whereas Marathon runner builds in speed, running itself into meaning, Going home walks slowly, carefully observing each step, each sound, even the silence permeating between the sounds. The pacing of each cannot partake of more diametrically opposed choices. Schaaf’s song runs through the words, through its measures, while Cohen speaks sparsely, slowly, with time to waste, to burn.

In this vein, both songs strike a deeply religious note, though the religiosity of post-modernism in which the search takes the place of the destination. Cohen, a continual, itinerant explorer, rehashes the experiences of a lifetime, but still seeks to create, “a love song, an anthem of forgiving, a manual for living with defeat, a cry above the suffering, a sacrifice recovering.” Notice how Cohen, carefully undermines our expectation with each turn of phrase. For Cohen, the bard of the complexities of love to desire to  write a love song, well I can’t help but chuckle. Furthermore, in the context of the other phrases, “a love song” take on a different meaning. Each phrase strikes a note of mystery, of reaching beyond what we think normal or natural. We rarely associate anthems with forgiveness, or cries above suffering, or a manual of living that focuses on defeat, but with the hindsight of wisdom they earn their coherence. These goals are the goals of experience, not of youth. Schaaf, considerably less subtle in his poetry, specifically in his imagery (Marathon runner, though an appropriate metaphor is not what one would call a fertile metaphor, or even a very new one, but it strikes the exact tone of running for no real purpose, but with an ostensible end in sight,) loses none of his power in his explicitness. In fact, in his genuineness, lies his power, because in a world of either easy cynicism (sorry, MGMT) or maudlin sentimentality (duh Coldplay and Mumford and Sons…) creating a genuine statement presents an almost harder challenge than a cryptic one. What then, could strike us as more genuine than the simple truth of, “I will run until I know what to believe.”

Schaaf describes a struggle with perhaps one of the foundational issues of our generation: the tension between a deep-seated desire for personal achievement with the loftier, but more elusive desire to be a good person, or the thin line between meaning and the absurd. The relationship between self and other plays a central role in both of these songs as they explore the complex aspects of an artist's role and life in society.
    
Yet, despite all this heaviness, they both display a healthy sense of sense-awareness and playfulness. Cohen undermines his persona of a visionary guide or prophet through his playful dialogue with his lazy bastard self, while Schaaf undercuts his desire for purpose and meaning in his realization of the selfishness of such a pursuit.

In the end, after we clear away this attempt at analysis, when it comes down to it I find it comforting for the new guard picking up the torch of these universal issues with a contemporary tinge, and even more comforting, both of these artists display no desire to stop finding out what they are running for, and for that, I feel gratitude.

Best Jewish Non-Fiction of 2011 (A Little Late...)

As the genre of non-fiction proliferates it becomes increasingly hard to create any sort of coherent “Best Of” list. While not much unites this list, all entries evince the essential traits of great non-fiction authors: deep curiosity, powerful insight, lucid prose, and a desire to see past the obvious or the dogmatic. This year offered us a great smorgasbord of non-fiction ranging from a genre-busting biography to innovative psychology. Besides for Deborah Baker’s book, The Convert, which deserves the title of best non-fiction book of the year, the rest of the list does not correlate to any ranking.

1. The Convert: A Tale of Exile and Extremism - Deborah Baker - Baker wrote a stunningly brilliant biography of Maryam Jameelah, previously known as Miriam Marcus, a secular Jew who converted to Islam and became a famous writer of Anti-American books in Pakistan. Baker weaves Jameelah’s story from her letters to her parents and others, but eventually Baker widens the book’s scope to investigate the charismatic leader that guided Jameelah’s transition, Mawlana Mawdudi, the divide between Islam and the West, and ultimately, an exploration of Baker herself: her assumptions about life, about civilization, and the limits of knowledge, all while pushing the boundaries of a biography considerably past what we expect from the genre.

2. The Swerve: How The World Became Modern- Stephen Greenblatt -  Winner of the National Book Award 2011 - Greenblatt, a Harvard Professor, is famous for his work on Shakespeare and his uncanny ability to teach dense ideas in a clear manner. Recently, Greenblatt wrote this fascinating, strangely suspenseful and intelligent book on something so minute as the saving of a poem: On the Nature of Things by Lucretius, a poem, he contends, convincingly, changed the world forever.

3. Thinking, Fast, and Slow - Daniel Kahneman - For decades Israeli psychologist Daniel Kahneman has made it his life’s goal to shatter our conceptions of humans as rational beings. His research into the cognitive mistakes we systematically make helped give birth to the new field of behavioral economics, and pioneered many parts of cognitive psychology. Besides these monumental accomplishments, the basic gift captured in this book, which puts together a lifetime of research, lies in the humbling experience of a documentation and explication of the mistakes we as humans consistently make, despite our pretensions to rationality.

4. J.D. Salinger: A Life - Kenneth Slawenski - I don’t envy the job of a biographer faced with the task of writing the life story of one of the most reclusive authors in history. Yet, somehow, Slawenski provides the reader exciting details of this beloved author’s life: his loves, his traumas, and his idiosyncrasies. However, even when Slawnenski lacks access to facts that many of us desire, he turns to his fan-like obsession with Salinger’s writing, providing insightful keys and analyses of Salinger challenging repertoire.

5. Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything - Joshua Foer - In a time when every non-fiction writer looks for an experience to capitalize on, with mixed results, (A.J. Jacobs acting as a sort of pioneer in this regard) Foer writes a deliciously playful book about his insinuation into a strange world of memory competitions, while concurrently, exploring the nature and importance of memory itself.

6. The Eichmann Trial - Deborah Lipstadt - How do you write about the Eichmann trial without running into the cement wall of Hannah Arendt and the academic proliferation surrounding this momentous case? Well, if you’re Lipstadt, a consistently brilliant history scholar, you do so with intense research and scientific rigor to create a proper political, legal, social, and historical context for the case and its universal implications. What emerges is a book that frees the trial from the towering presence of Arendt and explores the larger impact of the proceedings on the Zionist image, and the trial’s ability to propel the Holocaust into the global consciousness.

7. In the Valley of the Shadow: On the Foundations of Religious Belief - James Kugel - Kugel, a distinguished Bible critic, would have made this list three years ago for his honest and brilliantly clear introduction into the world of Biblical criticism, How to Read the Bible. This year, he makes it on the merit of this drastically different book in which he explores his beliefs through his experience with cancer. Kugel, never one to shy away from the struggles of contemporary Judaism, seeks, with the mind of an academic and the heart of poet, to find “the starting point of religious consciousness,” and takes the reader on a journey into the depths of religious experience.

8. The Universal Jew: Masculinity, Modernity, and the Zionist Moment - Mikhal Dekel - Dekel, a Professor of English Literature at City College, wrote this timely book that explores the literary roots of the Modern Israeli Identity. This book investigates, through a vast array of literature ( including Pinsker, Herzl, Eliot’s Daniel Deronda, Nietzsche etc.) the complex foundations of Israeli identity with roots in the emerging issues of gender, nationalism, and universality,  all in a pellucid prose that belies her academic proclivities.

9. Among Righteous Men: A Tale of Vigilantes and Vindication in Hasidic Crown Heights - Matt Shaer - Who knew a story about two rival vigilante groups in Crown Heights could be this interesting? Matt Shaer did, apparently. Shaer, a journalist for Harper’s and New York Magazine, wrote a journalistic novel/novelistic long piece of journalism that explores the innards of a Crown Heights Lubavitch society torn apart by the Messianist debate. He does this through the lens of a fight between two different vigilante groups, or what appears as a game of cops and robbers that spiraled out of control. The book signifies the announcement of a considerable talent who can write eloquent, insightful prose with the eye of a journalist, and the pen and empathy of a novelist.

10. The Age of Movies: Selected Writings of Pauline Kael - Pauline Kael, the deceased eminent movie critic from the New Yorker almost single-handedly created the genre of movie reviews we recognize today. Kael’s style of brazen, incisive, highly opinionated, and intelligent reviews set the stage for trenchant analysis of all types of movies as well as the proliferation and veneration of the movie critic. This book introduces a new generation to one of the voices that started it all, a voice that famously, feared no one. Famously, Kael criticized Landzman’s seminal movie the Shoah, and called the the message of the Sound of Music "a sugarcoated lie that people seem to want to eat”. Kael transformed the movie review into a form of art and social critique. This tome of a book offers an easy door into the world of Kael and her development as a writer.

Biblical Expression in the Movies - a Dwindling Art Form. (Also a Review of A Serious Man)

 This post, hopefully, will serve as a lead in to an important Malick topic, but it is a digression. Malick's movie display a complex relationship with the bible, so I found it interesting to think about the Bible and movies.

Fact: In the 1950s and 60s studios churned out explicitly biblical films.

Can you imagine going to see a blockbuster film entitled Esther and the King, or David and Bathsheba?
“Hey what you guys doing Saturday night?”
“Oh, well, we are really excited to see Solomon and Sheba!”

True, we all know that Cecil B. Demille’s Ten Commandments succeeded not only in its time, but for posterity, but we usually view this movie as an anomaly, even a joke. Disney tried Prince of Egypt, but we all felt embarrassed by that movie. Even in the Christian world, the Passion of Christ made perhaps way too much money, but most critics panned it, it stirred anti-Semitic controversy, and generally feels like an exception to the general type of movie today.

We’ve turned away from biblical themes, motifs, and imagery, let alone explicit reinterpretations of biblical stories. The shift away from the Bible as a source fits with the larger cultural Biblical illiteracy. I imagine the connection as symbiotic in which the illiteracy takes saps a writers desire to infuse their work with biblical themes, but at the same time the reason people care less about the Bible is the same reason people don't want to hear biblical stories. (The reasons of which deserves its own discussion)

People lament this fact for drastically different reasons. Some, who believe in the divinity of the text blame this religious malaise for some of the cultural ills we suffer. Others, just believe the book holy, the divine writ that can show people how to lead a proper life. Consequently, they view this neglect as a lost opportunity. The last group, a very different group, believe that when we disregard the Bible, we disregard some of the most influential cultural history. We forget how the ideals, the ideas, the themes, and forget that even the phrases we use as cliches  come explicitly or are based off the Bible. Our tropes, our archetypes, our paradigms, our artistic muses grew from the Bible. Many make this claim, but for the most eloquent, though not the most scholarly exposition of the matter read Robert Alter’s Pen of Iron, and for a more the more overblown, poetic, grand, distinct style of Harold Bloom see his new book on the importance of the King Jame’s Bible.

Here’s Alter who writes with more expertise and eloquence than myself, “What I should like to emphasize in regard to the American novelists from the nineteenth century to the twenty first whom I shall be considering is that the language of the Old Testament in its 1611 English version continued to suffuse the culture even the fervid faith in Scripture as revelation had begun to fade.”

Alter goes on to explain how this pervades our culture, but neglects to mentions its cultural irrelevance to most of the movie world. I find it interesting, and worthy of study, that for the most part, literature still works off the background of the Bible, while movies, again, with exceptions, do not. Perhaps this stems from the difference between literary language and tradition, and the new medium of images and movies. Either way, the difference exists.

Though I believe in the abiding beauty of the Bible, I understand the need to move away from these images and supplant them with images that we feel more relevant: superheroes, spies, anti-heroes, new villains, new myths, evil bosses, bureaucracies etc, but I find it interesting when biblical themes and imagery peaks through, in the mainstream, and how people react or do not react to it. The first time I realized that important directors riffed purposefully of the Bible was in my encounter with A Serious man. (True, both the third Matrix movie, Matrix: Evolution, or Matrix: The Architect, or Matrix: Awful, and Spiderman 2 drew heavily on the image of Jesus on the cross, both visually, and conceptually,  neither of these movies use consistent or particularly artistic visions - Spiderman 2 evincing some artistic sense, but lacking consistency while the Matrix, consistent by often incoherent and just lame.) The Job story, so universal, is hard to attribute fully to the Bible, but the Coen brothers made such a concerted effort to model their movie off the style and structure of the biblical Job that intertextuality screamed out from the movie. Yes, many critics discussed the Jobian aspect of the movie, but none I read explained how not only the content, but the style and structure mimics Job, which ironically fits with the general Biblical illiteracy.

First off, though just an allusion, The Coen brothers tempt Larry with a forbidden woman that he sees bathing from his roof. I’m not sure how this nod in the way of the biblical David story fits in, I’m sure it does, but the fact of the matter strikes me as more important. The movie itself, much beloved critically and by long-time fans, not only works off the content of Job, but follows its rigid structure. In each story the beaten up main character consults three people, with a black screen and white title introducing each rabbi, before he confronts the whirlwind (OK, Job visits four friends, but this small discretion is purposeful.) However, sadly, the whirlwind in the Coen Bros. vision does not herald the coming of the divine, but bears the ominous persistent mark of death.

In a way, because of the similar structure, it bears enough resemblance to deserve analysis of their commentary, or their take on the Job story. Here, they do not disappoint. There’s a sharp jab at each point, that both takes issue with the biblical account or updates the biblical account, translating an older text into a modern context. The three rabbis he visits, each one acts more ridiculous then the next, but while this might appear as poking fun at the pulpit, it is also a fair adaption of the plot. Three righteous friends try to comfort Job with platitudes, with unhelpful theology, and with the allure of silence, but all of them fail and anger Job, except Elihu, which the Coens, cleverly do away with. The greatest contrast lies out of the whirlwind. The Coens create an odd ominous aura of beauty. The tornado darkens, it approaches, people know to run, but they can’t look away from it’s destructive sublime nature. Larry finds out his worries about cancer were legitimate. Nothing appears out of the whirlwind as opposed to Job in which God appeared out of the whirlwind. Here, we receive, just the whirlwind, the signifier emptied of the signified. Nature: destructive, arbitrary the sign of nothing, but nothing.

But man, the beauty of it all. Why make it so beautiful, why end with such a snarl of a rock song? Though critically adored, some criticized the brothers for their relentlessly childish, angry, immature, unlikeable story and character.  I can’t help but imagine that they anticipated these claims, or the claim of rehashing the Jewish humor of Philip Roth, but that’s taking the movie, ironically, so seriously. The movie investigates the viewer, so to speak, can you take this as a joke, can you realize the absurdity of a lot of this? Anger need not inhibit true creation of art, it depends on how the artists molds and shape the anger. Philip Roth channels it well, Auslander, on a considerably smaller scale has started strong.  The Coen brothers do not fit into this category (I truly don’t understand the critics who take the Coen brothers at face value when they make simplistic or cryptic statements. Why not focus more on their work?) It’s less of a personal attack of the stupidity of religion or religious guides than an exploration of the absurdity and stupidity of the human condition, ourselves included. How absurd can we act? How little this all seems to mean? What are we willing to tolerate before we laugh? The Coens learned a thing or two from Kafka.  We tend to think of this movie as somehow different than the rest of their repertoire, but why assume their artistic vision doesn't intrude on their most personal stories?

And perhaps in spite, or on top of their desires for playfulness, for something raw and fresh and alive, they sought to capture the true feeling of the beautiful traces of an entrancing concept that we once accepted. People complain that it grounds itself so much in anger, but I find the effort to evince a true love. They recreate their childhood with such care, obsessiveness, and attention to detail. Nostalgia always seems mixed a little with anger and love, like all important things in life. It’s very easy to call the Coen brothers childish, but since when is that a insult? The Coen brothers care about the playfulness of art, of it’s ability to gaze its view upon anything and still find the absurdity of it all. Kundera see’s this as one of the highest goals and indicators of true art:

People often talk about Chekhov’s philosophy, or Kafka’s, or Musil’s. But just try to find a coherent philosophy in their writings! Even when they express their ideas in their notebooks, the ideas amount to intellectual exercises, playing with paradoxes, or improvisations rather than to assertions of a philosophy...Having crossed over the boundary of the novel, the serious philosopher becomes a playful thinker. There is not one serious sentence in the novel—everything in it is play.

By which Kundera means to say that all ideas in art are developing, flexible, in flux. They are not assertions, positions; they are explorations. He believes we err when we say a director or writer espouses a position of violence if he creates a violent movie etc. Artists live to investigate ambiguities, ideas, existential issues, not assert opinions. With this in mind, whenever I watch a Serious Man, besides the hilarity of it all, I see two brothers creating an exploration, of pain, suffering, absurdity, meaning, family, God, and temptation in a playfully ambiguous manner.

Here’s the out of the whirlwind scene. Let me know what you think.

Thanks for reading, 

JoeTalk

On Obsession: Hedgehogs, Foxes, Terrence Malick, and our need for Reinvention

Isaiah Berlin, an eminent literary scholar and historian, wrote a famous essay entitled the Hedgehog and the Fox. In it, he elaborates Tolstoy’s view of history, and its place in Tolstoy’s works. Though a brilliant essay, the works received its fame from his opening page, which is a gift to the world of writing (It is a long quote, but well worth the read):

There is a line among the fragments of the Greek poet Archilochus which says:' The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.’ Scholars have differed about the correct interpretation of these dark words, which may mean no more than that the fox, for all his cunning, is defeated by the hedgehog's one defense. But, taken figuratively, the words can be made to yield a sense in which they mark one of the deepest differences which divide writers and thinkers, and, it may be, human beings in general. For there exists a great chasm between those, on one side, who relate everything to a single central vision, one system less or more coherent or articulate, in terms of which they understand, think and feel--a single, universal, organizing principle in terms of which alone all that they are and say has significance--and, on the other side, those who pursue many ends, often unrelated and even contradictory, connected, if at all, only in some de facto way, for some psychological or physiological cause, related by no moral or aesthetic principle; these last lead lives, perform acts, and entertain ideas that are centrifugal rather than centripetal, their thought is scattered or diffused, moving on many levels, seizing upon the essence of a vast variety of experiences and objects for what they are in themselves, without, consciously or unconsciously, seeking to fit them into, or exclude them from, any one unchanging, all-embracing, sometimes self-contradictory and incomplete, at times fanatical, unitary inner vision.

We can all think of many statements which divide people into two large, simplistic groups. I don’t remember where I heard it, but someone insightfully stated that there are only two types of people in the world, those that break the complexity of the human experience down into two meager categories, and those that don’t. Point taken, but in defense of Berlin, not only does his divide make room for nuance and subtlety, but it serves as helpful analytical tool, a way to categorize information. (As Nietzsche, a hedgehog, loves to explain, all language inherently limits ideas and personality. Language is a cage we accept in order to communicate, but a cage nonetheless.)

I often think of this divide when engorging myself on a new artist or thinker. Are they Hedgehogs or Foxes? Kanye West – Hedgehog in content, but not in style? David Foster Wallace – perhaps somewhere in between? Terrence Malick – well, let’s find out. After finishing all of Malick’s movies, now seeing some of them numerous times, I tend to think of him as a Hedgehog, but I can’t say this with certainty.  

The thing about watching Malick straight is that it begins to feel like watching too much Seinfeld, Arrested Development, or the Office. Watch one show, and you think to yourself, genius, watch three in a row, and you think, ok, they basically followed a code, a pattern, almost an algorithm and applied it to a different subject, for Malick: to violence, criminals, love, war, death, creation, and God, but all throughout he follows the same techniques, uses the same methods to reveal and question similar truths. I don’t know how to gauge if this realization takes away from my esteem of these artists i.e. Larry David, Mitchell Hurwitz and Terrence Malick. Does the discovery of a distinct pattern albeit one tinkered and toyed with, molded for the specific content, but essentially the same, degrade the experience or our estimation of these people as artists? How do we gauge this question? Here, Berlin’s analysis provides a helpful conceptual tool.

Malick, though he tackles many different topics, approaches each topic with the same lenses, the same techniques. We can choose from many examples of the repetitive techniques, but characterization, imagery, narration, and ultimate themes, comes easily to mind.

His characters, in a style contrary to the expected style of characterization, receive little to no background or context. Their motivations remain shrouded in the mist of their own minds. In a sense, this ambiguity is almost biblical in effect, except, here, the characters turn into the emotions, experience, and ideas they represent, purposefully. They retain their humanity, but also retain their slipperiness, because the details of their personality points towards the universality of their desires, delusions, their motivations and malice. Like Dostoyevsky’s characters, though they remain deeply human, they also become defined by their existential struggles.

Malick’s imagery, often relying on natural light, always tends to capture both the majestic and the mundane. It slows down life in the way poetry slows down language so as to tell us appreciate the beauty of one word, or a single drop of rain hanging off the tip of a leaf. The narrative style, now famous, and used in varying degrees of success by imitators or fans, uses a voiceover, whether one person or numerous people, and steadily moved towards a narration that is less a commentary on the actual plot, and more the internal musings of lost souls. As for the themes, Malick turns everything into a question of cosmic proportions. His movies, no matter how grounded in the earthly always reach, almost desperately, for the transcendent.

In this sense, Malick seems like a Hedgehog, and even though Berlin does not use this distinction as a way to gauge an artist’s worth, it seems that in our culture, we value foxes over hedgehogs. We like, the Modernists, follow Ezra Pound’s statement of make it new.  We tend to like artists that transform their methods and goals as they mature. We believe that true artistry entails the ability to reinvent ones self, to grow past the limits of your initial visions; to master different genres, different styles, different stories. These, I thought, are the true signs of a master. Why tell the same story over again and again? Why wrote the same song over and over again?

Even if true artistry need not reinvent itself at each stage, I thought, there is something to be said for subtlety. Perhaps, all artists use codes and patterns, unconsciously or not, but maybe the highest artists don’t use patterns that sticks out too brightly. The viewer can easily say, ever see the Seinfeld where all of the zany plots fit together at the end in a clever bow, or every Arrested starts out with Michael attempting to better the position of his family only to turn spoil due to his naivete and the narcissism of his family? So to here, with Malick, ever see the Terrence Malick movie in which he uses images as words in a tone poem? Where a pastiche of images evokes an endless stream of associations till the point that the beauty, the depth of the emotion overwhelms the viewer leaving a wordless kiss on his heart.
   Certainly some great writers did not change their technique or accentuate different strengths in different novels. Many important artists did, but they need not set the only standard. It appears fair to say that Dostoevsky did not veer far from his style, even with his shorter works. Shakespeare, conquered and mastered the range of styles, as did Henry James, or think of Picasso’s different periods, or more contemporary the different styles of Radiohead, but many of Berlin's Hedgehogs are some of greatest artist and thinkers of all time.  

In terms of Malick, it grows clear that he doesn't change his style; he just perfects it. You can sense the subtle, but important shifts from movie to movie. Even if Malick doesn't change his game every time, and I cannot think of a director who does that besides Scorsese (maybe), he grows with each movie, more talented, more pure in his vision, more consistent. The Tree of Life stands out as Malick’s best, at least in the sense of the purest manifestation of his unique talents, not because of the updated technology, but because of the balances between parts. Malick, finally, brings together content to match the beauty and elusiveness of his cosmic imagery and poetry. In that sense, I cannot knock Malick for perfecting a style of movies, even though he hews close to what he knows.

More to say soon. Thanks for reading,

JoeTalk

On Obession: The Big Lebowski, Steve Jobs, and the lies of Self-Awareness

In the last post, I grazed the idea of a need for projects, or what I like to call immersive obsessional experiences. I believe this experience, at one point, touches upon all of us, but we rarely flesh out the complete implications of this idea. Our society has created categories for the two extremes on this spectrum: the workaholic and the bum.

We tend to assume that both of these archetypes contain both negatives and positives. Yes, even the “bum” life contains much merit. Think of the appeal of the Big Lebowski, especially the appeal of the Dude, or el Dudereeno, if you’re not into the whole brevity thing. The dude clearly doesn't work, his last gig coming as a roadie for Metallica or something stupid like that. He smokes a lot weed, listens to whale sounds while vegging out on the floor, drinks a lot of white Russians, possesses mostly sub-par detective skills, and bowls more in a month than most people bowl in a lifetime. He is not a genius of any sort, though clearly not stupid, he’s sharp, witty, and overall just relaxed about life(It’s not clear that he changes his clothing much, and for the most of the movie he appears to wear the same jellies that we wore, with embarrassment as children.) He displays good taste in music, hating the Eagles, while enjoying CCR. He makes out a check worth 69 cents to Ralph’s and faces a bunch of thugs with the aplomb of a seasoned spy. (“Obviously, you’re not a golfer.”) Though I imagine most of us couldn’t actually live that life, we respect it, cherish it, protect the movie with ferocity of a family member because the Dude represents something so heroic, so different. He represents a style of life we all, it seems, on some level wish we could achieve. A peace towards life, a contentment with ridiculous friends, with attending absurd plays put on by our landlords, and the simple joys of relaxing baths. The dude is everything our society secretly wants to be, mainly relaxed, open to adventures, and not neurotic and obsessive about work, achievement, and status anxiety. Though, imagine the epitaph on his tombstone: "Herein Lies Jeffrey Lebowski - Cool Dude."

Yet, on the opposite end of the spectrum we lionize those who give their life to their craft, to their field. Steve Jobs understood his shortcomings as a parent, but we, in this individualistic, achievement oriented society focus on his output, his contribution, his genius more than his inability to act as a responsible father. We forgive so much of our celebrities, intellects, artists, and visionaries because their work redeems their personal shortcomings. (By now it’s a truism that devotion to public life most often comes at the price of private life. We see this in the bible, throughout history and literature, and everyday in the headlines.) Their personalities transcend their actual personas so we end up not caring that, perhaps, our artists are assholes, or bad parents, or terrible people, or racists etc.

In a simplistic nutshell, this is our situation, a situation perhaps unique to our Western world. It constantly raises the question of how to navigate accomplishment with contentment, serious pursuits with relaxed wisps of nothingness. However, these two forces most often clash as oppose to compliment each other. Another truism that deserves mention is that we all, in some way partake of this culture of addiction. Yes, in many ways this exaggerates our situation, but try to think of a day in which you quell the boredom in your life with some sort of external pursuit, whether tv, movies, music, or the internet. It’s a strange realization that we are forever moving, forever thinking a head to what’s next, checking our phone too much, or our computer too much. Which isn’t to say that it’s bad, just incommensurate to our actual needs.

Consequently, At the same time that we all “know” the value of vacations we send mixed messages when those who make it in our society are those that can completely give of themselves, and their time. We, as Americans, live in this strange tension between work and play, between making money and knowing how to spend it, between sacrificing most of our life to a job while balancing family, social, and even religious needs. It’s almost a clusterfuck to think about, but it defines so much of our life, it’s hard to get around. Just think about retirement. I don't know when this idea entered history, but I imagine it as revolutionary, as somehow both a pinnacle to reach for, but also, an odd sense of defeat, because “It’s a very American illness, the idea of giving yourself away entirely to the idea of working in order to achieve some sort of brass ring that usually involves people feeling some way about you – I mean, people wonder why we walk around feeling alienated and lonely and stressed out.” (DFW, of course.) Even in retirement, we respect those who don’t truly retire, but change speeds, move their energy to other pursuits.

On a more normalized level, this tension comes out in the careers we choose, in how we allot our time, in the lifestyle we devote ourselves too, in how we choose to spend our vacation; what’s important in our lives: family, personal expression, making money, helping people, or a balance of all of these that include relaxation. We all try to find a balance that works for us, but I don’t know many who can speak of success in this area. Ironically, when we work, we desire vacation, and when we vacate, we desire something to do, whether that something be TV, or to sit and read on a beach. It’s infinitely hard to actually do nothing. Doing nothing is not an American idea or ideal, for the most part, and hence, we get to a situation in which we need projects. TV stands in as a passive project for many people, or drugs can fill this whole, but it seems, perhaps, that hardwired into our personalities is a need for forward movement. This sounds almost preachy, and perhaps even religious, but it doesn't have to. If you ever stop and observe your thoughts, most of the time we think about the the future, i.e. worrying about it, or thinking what we can accomplish, or what’s next, or we think about the past, how great it was, or regrets come up to our consciousness. True existence in the present, ironically, requires a lifetime of work. Either way, we perpetuate this false idea of rest. Give a sane person six months of nothing to do, no obligations, no responsibilities, nothing expected from them, and either they will gravitate towards projects, or gravitate towards insanity, consequently seeking out the rigid structure of a 9-5, or something to devote themselves too.

Many lament this fact. Easterners complain of our discomfort with silence. Psychologists asks us to try, even for ten minutes, to be alone with ourselves, our thoughts. They tell use that this frenetic culture, this need for constant movement is an evasive maneuver to confront the true horrors we harbor within: the terror of confronting our selves, our mortality, our mediocrity. David Foster Wallace explains, “Like most North Americans of his generation, Hal tends to know way less about why he feels certain ways about the objects and pursuits he's devoted to than he does about the objects and pursuits themselves. It's hard to say for sure whether this is even exceptionally bad, this tendency.”

I understand the ambivalence about this point. What do we expect to find when we explore the silence? How far can our culture of therapeutic self-awareness take us before we become obsessed with the whys of our life, and never engage in action? Certain psychologists, eschewing this more thought based life find that we thrive, we work at our highest potential in flow, a term that simply means losing oneself in the activity - a complete lack of self-consciousness. We forget that I am doing this action, and we wholly think about this action. Flow is the opposite of meditation, it is the opposite of mindfulness, it is mindlessness. It is the body, the brain, the mind on creative autopilot. So here we are - silence vs. total noise, flow vs. mindfulness, contentment vs. restlessness. Of course, these binary constructions paint too broad of a static picture, but these tensions exist. Are these questions of how to find a balance, or inherent tensions in life? Does the answer matter?

In a sense, at least at a certain point, I found the examined life less worth living. I envy those who can do without thinking, because ultimately, it’s not clear what the whys in life bestow. To the extent that self-awareness allows for better functioning great, but sometimes, understanding for the sake of understanding provides rationalizations, excuses to not challenge yourself, to not push yourself. We don’t stop to realize that the intellectual life, the life of self-awareness are choices, methods towards happiness just as the frenetic life is a chosen, or not chosen, but intuited path towards happiness, no? So, yes, indeed, we do seem to need projects, and perhaps they serve as a distraction from some truth desperate to be told, but why must that truth enslave the choices we make? Why must a deep conversation about the meaning of life be more important than playing an engrossing video game, or bungee jumping. We all chase something in life, some sort of fullness or contentment. Even the mystics who can embrace the nothingness, the silence, chase something: an effacement of the ego, or a unity. This all feels quite circular and hard to pin down, but maybe we need to accept this fact of life, our restlessness, and instead of trying to calm it down, learn how to control its directionality.

Thanks for reading,

JoeTalk

On Artistic Obsession: Or finding a new Genius in Terrence Malick

For my staycation, I hoped to find a new obsession, or follow a budding obsession to see where it would guide me. I chafe at saying this out loud, but I need projects. I need something in my life that completely engulfs my desires, anchors me, provides meaning, as that cliched sentence would have it. It’s a slightly unnerving realization that I don’t fully understand vacation. I find the idea of doing nothing hard to actually achieve. Some part of me feels a need to infuse meaning into everything, and the idea of vacation, of not doing anything for relaxation's sake exceeds my grasp. Perhaps this stems from my religious background, or perhaps it rises from something more endemic to the American experience.

For a while, religion provided enough of these facets of life that I overlooked the tension it stirred within me. Then, in my religious devolvement, the snarl of rebellion provided the spark. I learned to grow obsessed with the rift, with the leftovers of my battle, or the traces of past hopes. All the while, without a conscious decision, literature overtook my life. It provided glimpses of something transcendent, perhaps the relationship between author and reader, or the magical properties of language, or the inherent and deep power of creativity, which can serve as a drug just like anything else, it seems. Either way, needing a break from reading, I turned to a new genius in a new medium to fawn over, to analyze, to take apart and find new secrets of the world. For a while, I looked for a new voice to the take the place of the late David Foster Wallace, but I found none. Then I saw Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life, and immediately, I felt that stirring again. That knowledge that here lies true genius with unparalleled vision.

   
I never followed through on a director, writer, or really any artist (Besides DFW). I know full catalogues, but I never decided to sit down and move, chronologically, through the full oeuvre of an artist, from their first attempts to their more mature statements. I never personally documented the changes, the consistencies, the themes, the possibility of a body of work speaking to each other. The academic/book nerd/ex-Talmudic student finds the prospect of this project exciting, not simply for the creative inspiration I hope to receive, but because, in some odd way, I feel that such a intellectual choice represents a certain standard of devotion. It provides the forum for a true subjugation to the consistent vision of the artist. You trust the artist, watch every movie, or read every book, even the less successful pieces, the mistakes, and the experiments, simply to create your own larger picture, to the extent that you can. It’s never clear what I expect to find in excursions like this, perhaps some key, some mystery that the artist reveals through repeated patterns, as if art could be unlocked, coaxed or caress to give up its secrets. Life outside academia rarely affords a true attempt at this immersion. In the normal routine of life we find an artist at a random stage in their development, or we feel lucky to find ourselves on their bandwagon early on, but mostly, we receive exposure after their first attempt, which precludes the chance at a cleaner slate, because here, you already no the end, either how it ends, or their most mature attempt to date.
    
This method, almost academic in manner, both provide opportunities, but also drawbacks. I can map Malick’s development, his tinkering with his vision, with his experimental techniques, the early flaws and obvious successes, the obsessiveness. His movies, because they represent such a consistent manifestation of a personal vision, despite the different plots, signify a whole, a unity. The early movies prefigure the later ones, and the later one comment on the earlier films. He rewards a study of intertextuality. None of this, necessarily, takes away from the genius of each individual film, or even further, each individual frame and image. This method though, as academia often does, demystifies much of the experience. Malick, depends much on the mystifying effects of images, and here, analysis corrodes the experiential factor of his films. I begin to see patterns, to see holes, to see techniques repeated. Once you take a part a watch, you divest it of its magical properties. I know analytics need not divest something of its magic, but once you know the mechanics of ice, you can never utter the words of Garcia Marquez’s Aureliano Beundia as he discovered ice. Analysis provides a new beauty, but often stomps on childlike wonder to attain this more mature experience. 
   
  I just finished the last of the five movies Malick wrote and directed, and have much to say, but in this post, I just wanted to focus upon what this represents to me. The idea of an artist, a consummate artist, holds unique power in our culture. Think of Kanye West. Part of his attraction is that despite his antics, he is a true and obsessive artist who cares about every little detail of his craft. For some reason, we view this religious devotion to art as praiseworthy, almost heroic in the amount of attention we heap upon these people. We live as a culture that worships genius (see the recent death of St. Steve Jobs and the current argument if he was actually a genius...) I don't fully know what this says about us as a generation, but I imagine the point deserves consideration.
     
    Charles Taylor, a prominent religious historian, traces this need back to the decline of religious influence on civilization. We needed new guides, new saints, new inspirations, and we found it in our artists and intellects. Moreover, as philosophy shifted from the external world, a world of metaphysics destroyed by the currents of rational thought, our artists turned inwards towards personal experience. This amalgam has created a bias towards the artists who stay true to their personal vision, who plumb the depths of their souls, regardless where it takes them. (See Lars Von Triers self-indulgent new Movie Melancholia in which he equates his personal depression with the end of the world.) I digress. Hopefully, in the next posts, I can flesh out some of these points as well as begin to talk about Malick's movies in a substantive way. 
Thanks for reading, 
JoeTalk.