Don't Criticize Aunt Emily

"She lived in an attic."

"Yeah, she was the whacky cat-lady."

"Didn't she wear all white all the time?"

"She never left her room."

"She was crazy."

Why, gentle reader? Why do we react this way? Why is this the all-the-time response to being presented with Emily Dickinson poetry? Is it merely because no one else lived the way she did? Or that we know so little about all the other poets? Is it something deeper, some humanly natural urge to cast down those things that are not like ourselves, feeling safer inside of our criticism? She's a weirdo, I am not; therefore, I feel good.

Why is Emily Dickinson reduced to her lowest common denominator?

We side-step her with incriminating notions about her craziness. Dickinson lived in her attic, she had a lot of cats, she never got out. Dickinson used a lot of hyphens, too many hyphens.

Too many hyphens??!! Since when did any of us care at all about the number of hyphens used by poets??? Come on, she must be kind of important, sort of regarded. After all, she is one of the seven revolving screen-savers on my Kindle. That must count for something.

Let us not devolve, gentle reader. Let us breathe in:

The Brain—is wider than the Sky—
For—put them side by side—
The one the other will contain
With ease—and You—beside—

The Brain is deeper than the sea—
For—hold them—Blue to Blue—
The one the other will absorb—
As Sponges—Buckets—do—

The Brain is just the weight of God—
For—Heft them—Pound for Pound—
And they will differ—if they do—
As Syllable from Sound—       

 

 

Do you smell the wisdom? Can you taste the nuance? Don't you sense the truth?

 

I don't get it either. (All right, maybe I do. At least, perhaps, better than the first-time reader) But "getting it" is not the endgame. We are asking the wrong question when we read a poem and say "So what's it about?"

 

Because poetry isn't "about" things; instead, let us consider poetry to be a way of things.

 

A way of seeing, a way of hearing, a way of knowing, of experiencing, of imagining.

 

Dickinson's assertion in the final stanza that the Brain and God "differ if they do as Syllable from Sound" implies very little difference at all. The difference between the raw, naturalness of sound and its definable segment, the syllable. It is the distance between a thing and itself again, before and just after being named, or categorized, or defined. By us. Our brains have infinite capacity, like God, to contain and absorb and also to define and label. We can allow for unrestrained rawness and in the same breath call it so.

 

But which is bigger, the Brain or God? Which is better?

 

I don't know either. Not according to this poem, and not for myself. (All right, maybe I do for myself, but to hint at it here would be to potentially influence your own reading, and that is not what non-doers do) But if I read this again. And maybe again.

 

And I start to get a sense of things. 

Hello darkness my old friend

I've come to talk with you again.

If only I were listening.

And why would I want to? It's March Madness season, which means I have no less than three apps open right now, each one tracking my seven different brackets, along with the requisite play-by-play score updates, analysis, Giant-Killer tracker, Bracket-Buster warner, Insider predictor, and the constant flow of the Twitter feed push alerting its way onto my screen.

I also have text conversations simultaneously going with 4 different groups of people -- all told numbering 31 individual friends/acquaintances -- discussing the tracking of my seven different brackets, along with the requisite play-by-play score updates, analysis, Giant-Killer tracker, Bracket-Buster warner, Insider predictor, and the constant flow of the Twitter feed push alerting its way onto my screen.

Meanwhile, I am playing 14 games of Words with Friends with 14 people, some friends, some acquaintances, some perfect strangers (2 of whom must be a robot, because their vocabularies are insanely, frustratingly perfect). My Facebook page is dinging, because I posted my infant son holding a copy of my brackets. Because he is so adorable, I have 10s and 20s of people Liking this photo because he is adorable with another 10s and 20s of people ignoring the kid and commenting on the actual brackets themselves. To which I am compelled to reply.

The television is on. Basketball on no less than 4 channels. Non-stop analysis on another two. Commercials playing on all 6 at once (I know this because I flip between all 6 to make sure, while trying to watch Gone in 60 Seconds, because I can't not watch that movie when it's on). I have music playing in the background. At least I think I do. I remember turning the music on. But I may have lost track of the background. It is buried deep at the moment.

My phone is vibrating. And dinging. I wait. It is now playing music, my ringtone, Pearl Jam's "Jeremy" which means that if there is still music playing in the background, it is now competing with the speakers on my iPhone. As well as the music from the commercial playing on my television. And the different-sounding dinging alerting me of my robo-opponent playing more impossible Words. Also, the chirping of some weather report I forgot that I set. Rain coming.

I think I hear my infant son crying. Is he still upstairs? Huh.

In his 1946 essay "On Silence" Aldous Huxley identifies that monumental technological achievement, the radio, as the new and pervasive medium for noise, calling it "nothing but a conduit through which prefabricated din can flow into our homes."

I wonder how much harsher Mr. Huxley would assess the newest tech wonder, the smartphone, against the radio. How much more devastated he would claim our personal worlds to be because of it. How much noisier our personal headspaces are because of it.

I wonder. And I can only do so by turning it off. All of it.

The vision that still remains in Simon & Garfunkel's song exists -- wait for it, gentle reader -- within the sound of silence.

And I think the silence exists not by looking down, to my screen, but rather up, to my world.

I think.

Mary Shelley's Rearviewmirror

 



 

 

Dear Victor Frankenstein,

 

Shoulda, coulda, woulda, buddy boy. You made a man. Who killed your entire family. Mush on, sledge dogs. Mush.

 

 

Dear Frankenstein's Monster,

 

Whoops. You killed the only human who could stand your hideous face without trying to shoot it out from under your dark and beautiful, wind-whipped hair. Huh.

 

 

Dear Elizabeth Lavenza,

 

What was your major malfunction? You just walked right by Mr. Henry Clerval, didn't you? If only you would have been cast on a reality television show, this could have worked out better for you.

I Have Trouble Starting my Essay.

Me too, gentle writer. Me too.

So let's get right to the heart of the matter: do you have the same trouble starting a conversation?

With an old friend?

I didn't think so.

Ok. So what is different between a conversation with a buddy about sports, movies, music, dating, etc. and an expository essay about the "human position of suffering" as it is found in Auden's Musee des Beaux Arts?

Or the ironic tone displayed in chapter 12 of Grendel?

Or how two symbols from To Kill a Mockingbird are expressed with two different literary devices?

Or discussing what the nature of art actually is?

Miles. The difference is miles apart. Make no mistake, we are talking about apples and oranges here.

But let us not be daunted. I want to very seriously distinguish between product and process. Because while the product is different (a casual, informal dialogue with a friend v. a revised, formal analysis on paper), the process is not. And this is good news. When I start talking to my buddy, I just start. Because I know my audience, and my audience calls for informality. Casual is okay, expected. But this is not the case with essay writing. We must be formal, analytical. Ok. So be those things.

But don't over-shoot! "Formal" and "analytical" do not, should not translate to Shakespearean syntax. We shouldn't suddenly don a phony British accent (because that's how smart people sound in Hollywood) in our writing. We shouldn't confuse "formal" with "right-click my mouse to find synonyms I've never used before." To be clear, formal means things like:

1. no apostrophes
2. no slang (unless it is quoted and therefore something to analyze)
3. limited jargon (no one wants to read the definition of synecdoche. Ever :)
4. no :) like in the previous example
5. in other words, nothing you normally put in an email or text to a friend!

Voila!!! We just hit on it!!! How do you type to that old friend? Emails and/or texts and/or tweets etc.? Good! Then elevate the formality of your diction just above that, and you're set.

Now stop thinking and start typing.

Because there is no perfect beginning. And if you forget everything else we just discussed, remember that.

There is no perfect beginning. There are plenty of good ones, and just as many bad ones. But no perfect ones. So get over finding it.

And start.

Where Do They Eat?

Where does The Joker go to eat? McDonald's? Does he stroll in like he is the fast-food chain's clown? Different colors, more menace than whimsy, but still a clown? Camouflage-in-plain-sight? Number 13, crispy, with a large fry and a large Coke, please. No, not diet Coke, regular. Man, his cholestrol must be through the roof.

And where does Vader go for the maintenance of that Light-Brite torso of his? Sure, droids might perform the work, but surely there is a living creature/humanoid who ultimately owns the establishment or oversees the auto shop on the Star Destroyer, right? There's pressure for you; not just a Tuesday morning at all. And does Vader pack a sack lunch when landing on other planets, or does he trust to native cuisine? I can't imagine the burn wounds did any favors for his digestive tract.

Where does the Wicked Witch of the West get her clothes? I realize we are only talking about a fitted black sheet with room for her arms, but still. Is she spinning her own cotton looms? Does she knit? Is the WWW a knitter? With the monkeys coming and going, bringing fresh supplies, commenting on her patterns, her backstitch seams? Do the monkeys comment on her backstitch seams? And for goodness sake, does she run her designs by anyone else, or is she really so confident as to never, ever seek approval from others?  We are talking about fashion, after all.

And where is she eating? In the castle, every morning by herself with nothing but her coffee? Does she brew a full pot? Or just a K-cup single? Decaf? Probably not.

Where does Lady Macbeth shop for her hand lotion? She uses lotion, right? Just as a normal part of her daily hygeine regimen? Or hand sanitizer? Something, right? Who is supplying her with this? Does she receive free samples? Who is the shopowner audacious enough to charge her? Does she shop for any of this herself, or make this a job for servants? Does she ever borrow a smidgeon from someone else? Casual conversation, hey what's that it smells nice, it's my moisturizer do you want some, sure. But then it doesn't smell as good as she thought. There's trouble. Letting Lady MacB use some of your hand lotion. Trouble, that.

And who is cooking her food? Do they dialogue with her about her nutritional needs, or do they just cook her whatever she wants? Fried foods and ice cream every night? Heavy on the veggies, skimpy on the red meat? Would you ever use the word skimpy in front of her? No, gentle reader, you would not.

I tell you what.

World War Zzzz

I watched World War Z last night. The zombie moving starring Brad Pitt and 1,000,000,000,000 digital extras.

I went to bed. I did not have nightmares. I slept soundly. In fact, I did not really think much more of the movie outside of the fact that I had watched the movie. Actually, I thought a whole lot about what I was possibly missing from the movie----some underlying meaning, some deeper angle into ideas of humanness and humanity and what it means to be a human as opposed to being not human (or a zombie)----because I guess I wanted something to mull.

Something. Anything.

This morning I clicked on Roger Ebert's review of World War Z and eureka! I discovered words that described my own fuzzy opinion on this big-budget film that resonated such very small waves with me. (Read Ebert's full review here) Ebert aptly describes the camera shots as "panoramas of thousand of computer-generated zombies swarming ant-like up walls and over barricades and taking down computer-generated choppers while panicked generals watch on monitors from thousand of miles away and Forster's close-up camera wobbles and wiggles and swings all over the place to generate unearned 'excitement.'"

Unearned excitement. That's it. That's why this movie didn't stick with me.

It's not that this movie is bad. I enjoy zombie flicks, I'm a Brad Pitt fan, I like gratuitous violence for a cause sequences, but I also get bored fast with anything that belabors the fact that the main guy ain't dyin' no matter what. (Enter any Pirates of the Caribbean movie here...) And I also cannot invest myself in any character or conflict or moral dilemma which hasn't first been invested in elsewhere. Why am I suppposed to care? Even about the end of the world as we know it? HOW I am supposed to care, when it only takes 3 minutes and 49 seconds (I exaggerate?) of film time to present the swirl of emotion I am supposed to feel, compress it, and dab it in my eye, only it's not my eye, it's a digital eye, moving at a frenetic, zombie pace.

Unearned excitement indeed. Give me the book.

Right? Right, gentle reader? Isn't this precisely why the book beats Hollywood, always?

I'm not talking about a large percentage here. I am talking about a perfect record. Book beats movie 100% of the time. Close seconds allowed and expected, but ultimate winners will always come packaged in ink. Or at least digital ink.

Condition: You have to have read the book first. Because if you haven't, then the phrase "based on the novel/short story/etc. by _____" takes on such flimsy meaning and there's no going back. Enter the Bourne series here. Excellent movies. So very loosely based on Ludlum's novels. Miles apart different and both excellent fun.

Prove me wrong here. Need another example? Look at my previous post.

Look at the career that Tolkien handed to Peter Jackson even as he confidently stepped back up to the winner's podium.

Look at Harry Potter episode 3. Or the fact that it took them two movies to fully give us The Deathly Hallows.

Look at any of the clumsy attempts at Alice in Wonderland (weirdly creepy). Or any movie based on the writing of Michael Crichton (Jurassic Park the movie had 17 total good minutes). Or Stephen King, for that matter. The Stand miniseries, anyone?

And why is this? Why the difference? Why the superiority in writing? Unearned excitement. Hollywood provides us a cheaper route to adrenaline, emotion, even inspiration. 90 minutes of digital zombies cannot match 90 minutes of its page-turning equivalent. It's not bad, in fact it can be quite great. But not better. Our brains know better.

I could be wrong.

98% of All Literature=The Gatsby Dilemma

"I thought you knew, old sport. I'm afraid I'm not a very good host."


I'm Gatsby.

Gatsby's only legitimate problem was that he backed the wrong horse. Yes, Daisy is a horse in this scenario. What Gatsby should have done was back a winner, like Khartoum. But if Gatsby had backed Khartoum, then he would have run the risk of turning into something less than Gatsby and more like a typical power-hungry money-grubber who only interests himself with seeking more power and more money.

"I thought you knew, old sport. I'm afraid I'm not a very good host. And I wear silk pajamas."

I'm Jack Woltz.

 



So we need someone willing to back a tragic horse, who still has an edge, but not so much edge that dooms him to a less reputable spot on the good guy spectrum of characters. Someone with a sporting chance at victory.

"I thought you knew, old sport. I'm afraid I'm not a very good host. I'm not a host at all."

I'm Batman.

 

 

Still too much.

 

 

I'm Sam I Am.

 

Sam I Am does display the same kind of grit that Jay does in his respective story. The only key difference is that Sam is not too put off by the Other Guy in the story. Sam doesn't wallow in the past or attempt to recreate it in the present. In fact, Sam could be considered quite dull due to his inability to change gears, to "track with the rest of us," to move on. But it is this singular ability to remain, gentle reader, to not double back, to only see now that allows for his own personal happy ending.

 

Then again, I would hate to apply such a trite final objective as happiness to either story. Because I don't think either are quite that shallow. Not even that 2D fellow wearing a yellow Eurofit moomoo with the gangrenous protein.