"...now look around you carefully and see with your own eyes what I will not describe, for if I did, you wouldn't believe my words."
Monday, May 23, 2016
Saturday, May 21, 2016
Thursday, May 5, 2016
Fun Home by Alison Bechdel
A new kind of book for me - both as a graphic novel and as what I would call an archival memoir. Bechdel picks apart her own life to an intense extent in an attempt, I think, to make sense of it or perhaps to elevate it to the level of art.
Often I didn't appreciate this meticulous detailing followed by a forceful insistence on the meaning of those details. It seemed incredibly heavy-handed. I still feel that way about this book.
But there were moments of brilliance in reading this. Most of these moments concerned the author's father. I loved the sketch of him on the first page.
In general, this is a book about the author's father and the family he created. It's about that curious fact of how we are intimately connected with our parents - but so unaware of them as the individuals they were before us. If we chose to try and discover who that person was - that's something we don't do until much later in our lives or perhaps we never pursue that knowledge. It is an age old question: can I understand myself without understanding where/who I come from?
This book is also about sexuality. Homosexuality was what tied the author to her father most - he was a closeted gay man. It is unclear whether exploring sexuality is this books prime objective or a byproduct of an attempt to understand her father and his suicide. Either way, sexuality is a major character in this book.
A homosexual is someone who lives outside of what many consider to be the norm. Whatever the truth is, this author alludes to the strength this marginalization gives to a homosexual. I don't know if I believe this. Lately, I've been thinking about what it means to be an outsider. To me it always means that you experience life in a way many people are not familiar with and do no account for. There are MANY different ways of being an outsider. Only some of them are truly substantial - by that I mean based on something that is a mainstay of your character. For example, there are people who dress differently and this brings them a certain amount of attention - they may be viewed as different or an outsider based on their appearance. But this is a transitory, superficial consideration of that individual - next year it may be completely obsolete. However, if you are a homosexual or perhaps autistic - what makes you an outsider will always be there. The basis of your outsiderness is a fundamental part of your character and so it cannot be shed. Perhaps, you want to shed it but if you feel that way you are going to be miserable.
However, whether your outsiderness is superficial or subterranean in and of itself it does not make you an elevated individual. You are not necessarily special because of your uniqueness. This seems strange and I have often been tantalized into concluding that, yes, "I am special because I am unique in this way." I think Bechdel wants to do the same thing based on her sexual identity. She talks about how homosexual people have been responsible for great leaps forward in social thought or have supported radical artists that eventually were appreciated for their great abilities. She wants to believe that only homosexual people could have taken those chances because they live on the outskirts of society.
Don't get me wrong - I think that being marginalized sometimes does inevitably lead you to be more open to radicalness in many ways. But, as always, it's always about the individual as a whole. You're not only a homosexual, you are a woman, you are a caucasian, you are of this belief or that class or this personality, etc. You cannot separate the parts from the whole when getting to know a person.
I'm easily tempted into simple solutions, thoughts, paths, etc. I always have been this way and it is a colossal habit to try and alter in any way. But these days, for a long while really, I know that this quality does not serve me. It serves me up to all kinds of trouble/mistakes/devastation/regrets. So I was wary of accepting Bechdel's conclusions about sexuality at times.
But it was clear that it was the common ground between her and her father. That I did understand and didn't question. Her conversations with him about sexuality or her musings about his life experiences as a gay man were the best parts of this book. And who doesn't appreciate family drama? This is a good story about that topic. I'm glad I read it - but it was not a great novel or anything. Mostly, I'm glad I attempted something new.
Today's Letter
I read something today that affected me. Times are stranger and stranger these days - and I wanted to share this because it seemed like it made sense a midst the chaos.
This is the preface to "Tropic of Cancer" written by Anais Nin.
Something to keep in - the author of "Tropic of Cancer" is Henry Miller. Anais Nin was Henry Miller's lover for many years. So, to be explicit, she is writing about the work of a man she is intimately involved with.
Here is a book which, if such a thing were possible, might restore our appetite for the fundamental realities. The predominant note will seem one of bitterness, and bitterness there is, to the full. But there is also a wild extravagance, a mad gaiety, a verve, a gusto, at times almost a delirium. A continual oscillation between extremes, with bare stretches that taste like brass and leave the full flavor of emptiness. It is beyond optimism or pessimism. The author has given us the last frisson. Pain has no more secret recesses.
In a world grown paralyzed with introspection and constipated by delicate mental meals this brutal exposure of the substantial body comes as a vitalizing current of blood. The violence and obscenity are left unadulterated, as manifestation of the mystery and pain which ever accompanies the act of creation.
The restorative value of experience, prime source of wisdom and creation, is reasserted. There remain waste areas of unfinished thought and action, a bundle of shreds and fibers with which the overcritical may strangle themselves. Referring to his Wilhelm Meister Goethe once said, "People seek a central point: that is hard, and not even right. I should think a rich, manifold life, brought close to our eyes would be enough without any express tendency; which, after all, is only for the intellect."
The book is sustained on its own axis by the pure flux and rotation of events. Just as there is no central point, so also there is no question of heroism or of struggle since there is no question of will, but only a obedience to flow.
The gross caricatures are perhaps more vital, "more true to life," than the full portraits of the conventional novel for the reason that the individual today has no centrality and produces not the slightest illusion of wholeness. The characters are integrated to the false, cultural void in which we are drowning; thus is produced the illusion of chaos, to face which requires the ultimate courage.
The humiliations and defeats, given with a primitive honesty, end not in frustration, despair, or futility, but in hunger, and ecstatic, devouring hunger - for more life. The poetic is discovered by stripping away the vestiture of art; by descending to what might be styled "a preartistic level,
the durable skeleton of form which is hidden in the phenomena of disintegration reappears to be transfigured again in the ever-changing flesh of emotion. The scars are burned away - the scars left by the obstetricians of culture. Here is an artist who reestablishes the potency of illusion by gaping at the open wounds, by courting the stern, psychological reality which man seeks to avoid through recourse to the oblique symbolism of art. Here the symbols are laid bare, presented almost as naively and unblushingly by this over-civilized individual as by the well-rooted savage.
It is no false primitivism which gives rise to this savage lyricism. It is not a retrogressive tendency, but a swing forward into unbeaten areas. To regard a naked book such as this with the same critical eye that is turned upon even such diverse types as Lawrence, Breton, Joyce and Celine is a mistake. Rather let us try to look at it with the eyes of a Patagonian for whom all that is sacred and taboo in our world is meaningless. For the adventure which has brought the author to the spiritual ends of the earth is the history of every artist who, in order to express himself, must traverse the intangible gridirons of his imaginary world. The air pockets, the alkali wastes, the crumbling monuments, the putrescent cadavers, the crazy jig and maggot dance, all this forms a grand fresco of our epoch, done with shattering phrases and loud, strident, hammer strokes. [my emphasis]
If there is here revealed a capacity to shock, to startle the lifeless ones from their profound slumber, let us congratulate ourselves; for the tragedy of our world is precisely that nothing an longer is capable of rousing it from its lethargy. No more violent dreams, no refreshment, no awakening. In the anaesthesia produced by self-knowledge, life is passing, art is passing, slipping from us: we are drifting with time and our fight is with shadows. We need a blood transfusion.
And it is blood and flesh which are here given us. Drink, food, laughter, desire, passion, curiosity, the simple realities which nourish the roots of our highest and vaguest creations. The superstructure is lopped away. This book brings with it a wind that blows down the dead and hollow trees whose roots are withered and lost in the barren soil of our times. This book goes to the roots and digs under, digs for subterranean springs.
-Anaïs Nin
1934
This is the preface to "Tropic of Cancer" written by Anais Nin.
Something to keep in - the author of "Tropic of Cancer" is Henry Miller. Anais Nin was Henry Miller's lover for many years. So, to be explicit, she is writing about the work of a man she is intimately involved with.
Here is a book which, if such a thing were possible, might restore our appetite for the fundamental realities. The predominant note will seem one of bitterness, and bitterness there is, to the full. But there is also a wild extravagance, a mad gaiety, a verve, a gusto, at times almost a delirium. A continual oscillation between extremes, with bare stretches that taste like brass and leave the full flavor of emptiness. It is beyond optimism or pessimism. The author has given us the last frisson. Pain has no more secret recesses.
In a world grown paralyzed with introspection and constipated by delicate mental meals this brutal exposure of the substantial body comes as a vitalizing current of blood. The violence and obscenity are left unadulterated, as manifestation of the mystery and pain which ever accompanies the act of creation.
The restorative value of experience, prime source of wisdom and creation, is reasserted. There remain waste areas of unfinished thought and action, a bundle of shreds and fibers with which the overcritical may strangle themselves. Referring to his Wilhelm Meister Goethe once said, "People seek a central point: that is hard, and not even right. I should think a rich, manifold life, brought close to our eyes would be enough without any express tendency; which, after all, is only for the intellect."
The book is sustained on its own axis by the pure flux and rotation of events. Just as there is no central point, so also there is no question of heroism or of struggle since there is no question of will, but only a obedience to flow.
The gross caricatures are perhaps more vital, "more true to life," than the full portraits of the conventional novel for the reason that the individual today has no centrality and produces not the slightest illusion of wholeness. The characters are integrated to the false, cultural void in which we are drowning; thus is produced the illusion of chaos, to face which requires the ultimate courage.
The humiliations and defeats, given with a primitive honesty, end not in frustration, despair, or futility, but in hunger, and ecstatic, devouring hunger - for more life. The poetic is discovered by stripping away the vestiture of art; by descending to what might be styled "a preartistic level,
the durable skeleton of form which is hidden in the phenomena of disintegration reappears to be transfigured again in the ever-changing flesh of emotion. The scars are burned away - the scars left by the obstetricians of culture. Here is an artist who reestablishes the potency of illusion by gaping at the open wounds, by courting the stern, psychological reality which man seeks to avoid through recourse to the oblique symbolism of art. Here the symbols are laid bare, presented almost as naively and unblushingly by this over-civilized individual as by the well-rooted savage.
It is no false primitivism which gives rise to this savage lyricism. It is not a retrogressive tendency, but a swing forward into unbeaten areas. To regard a naked book such as this with the same critical eye that is turned upon even such diverse types as Lawrence, Breton, Joyce and Celine is a mistake. Rather let us try to look at it with the eyes of a Patagonian for whom all that is sacred and taboo in our world is meaningless. For the adventure which has brought the author to the spiritual ends of the earth is the history of every artist who, in order to express himself, must traverse the intangible gridirons of his imaginary world. The air pockets, the alkali wastes, the crumbling monuments, the putrescent cadavers, the crazy jig and maggot dance, all this forms a grand fresco of our epoch, done with shattering phrases and loud, strident, hammer strokes. [my emphasis]
If there is here revealed a capacity to shock, to startle the lifeless ones from their profound slumber, let us congratulate ourselves; for the tragedy of our world is precisely that nothing an longer is capable of rousing it from its lethargy. No more violent dreams, no refreshment, no awakening. In the anaesthesia produced by self-knowledge, life is passing, art is passing, slipping from us: we are drifting with time and our fight is with shadows. We need a blood transfusion.
And it is blood and flesh which are here given us. Drink, food, laughter, desire, passion, curiosity, the simple realities which nourish the roots of our highest and vaguest creations. The superstructure is lopped away. This book brings with it a wind that blows down the dead and hollow trees whose roots are withered and lost in the barren soil of our times. This book goes to the roots and digs under, digs for subterranean springs.
-Anaïs Nin
1934
Saturday, April 23, 2016
Thursday, April 14, 2016
I find this true.
I'm a very black and white person. For many years I've felt that was going to be one of my qualities that would be disruptive to my life. It's an inflexible way to think - and in this world that forces compromise, it's easy to sense how such a mindset could cause trouble.
So, if "good" and "bad" are relative terms - that is to say you cannot put those words on certain actions/things and they'll stick to them each and every time - then there's no road map to deciphering anything. Which, not so oddly, is the theme of this blog. My desire to have a key/map to make deciphering what confuses me easier because the confusion overwhelms me. Because I don't think well on my feet. No such map/key exists because nothing stays the same. The desire for one wasn't exactly what made me a poor person - but some of the things that I've stubbornly done to make it all fit in defiance of the way of things have made me a poor person.
I get frustrated assuming that I'm the worst there is - that no one else has sunk to the depths I've been able to in this life. And I've met a lot of people who have reinforced that belief (whether intentionally or not). One thing those experiences have taught me is the truth of this graphic. No one is perfect. Don't try to be perfect for anyone else. It's a zero gain venture. What matters is that your sensibilities are similar. That the problems/foibles/concerns you have are not worsened by them - that you don't bring each other down as you struggle to finds ways of living that work for you both. Same goes for other types of relationships - between yourself and your passions/hobbies/career whatever - seek for a buoyancy in them. Don't ask them to be perfect and don't ask yourself to be perfect for them. Explore the thing as it is and ask - does its demons play well with your own? And then for the hardest part - at least as far as I'm concerned - if the answer is "no" - I would have to fiddle with this situation because naturally that buoyancy is not there - then don't continue. I struggle with this because I'm not an accepting person - particularly of the things that I don't want to hear because they would blow my "map" my "plan" to smithereens. This is all I've seemed to learn so far. That these are my habits, this is what the world does in response, and what I wish I could change my course to accepting.
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