so i moved my blog to tumblr
http://betterangles.tumblr.com/
cuz i don't really like blogger layouts anymore. also its tumblr is much easier to use.
i'm trying to post. we'll see how long this lasts.
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live
From when we're very little, we tell ourselves fiction. Our childhood imagination lets us pretend to be astronauts, fireman, police officers, super heroes, and everything in between. But as even as the scope of this imagination seems to know no bounds, in fact, these fictions are very small. They represent merely options of what is possible, at an age when anything is, in fact, possible. There is no world or window closed to the 7-year old, and it is precisely this that makes the stories that we tell when we're little closer to the truth than we'd imagine.
As we get older, the stories we tell get less outlandish. It starts off small. Becoming a superhero becomes wanting to be Paul Farmer. Becoming an astronaut becomes wanting to be an someone who designs the rockets. When I was 7 I wanted to be Spiderman. When I was 16 I wanted to be an ER doctor. When I was 20 I wanted to write public policy that would benefit the world in some way. The motivation was the same, but the limits of what was possible were drawn closer.
At some point, we hit a cross roads. Because, at this point, our imagination closes off to such an extent that it becomes tighter and smaller than what is actually possible. We stop pushing ourselves to dream of what actually cannot be, and in fact, end up suppressing the possibility of what can actually be achieved. Simply, we settle.
What we settle on is a matter of personal taste. We settle on jobs. We settle on relationships. We settle on a life, a comfortable life, a life we have constructed that may not be perfect, but is pleasant enough that we believe we can stand it for the rest of our living days. We have no imagination. We cease to dream.
Joan Didion once wrote that we "tell ourselves stories in order to live." The line is perfect, because to live is to not necessarily flourish. The stories we tell can sustain us, but it can also trap us, just as life can be affirming, and destructive. When we begin to tell a fiction of acceptance, when the stories we tell are no longer of what is possible, but what is probable and thus inevitable, then those stories close off a world, a life, that can actually be.
In the end, neither you nor I know which story is true. The story where we are an extra, in a play much like the one in the movie Synedoche, NY, where the mere fact that the play continues is the point. Or the other story. The story that we believe as children, and to an extent most of us have, or at least should have, stopped believing now. The story where we get to be the star, where there is something special about us that makes the story of us worth telling at all. I don't know which story is true. But for now, I wish to believe in the fiction that there is this other story out there after all.
As we get older, the stories we tell get less outlandish. It starts off small. Becoming a superhero becomes wanting to be Paul Farmer. Becoming an astronaut becomes wanting to be an someone who designs the rockets. When I was 7 I wanted to be Spiderman. When I was 16 I wanted to be an ER doctor. When I was 20 I wanted to write public policy that would benefit the world in some way. The motivation was the same, but the limits of what was possible were drawn closer.
At some point, we hit a cross roads. Because, at this point, our imagination closes off to such an extent that it becomes tighter and smaller than what is actually possible. We stop pushing ourselves to dream of what actually cannot be, and in fact, end up suppressing the possibility of what can actually be achieved. Simply, we settle.
What we settle on is a matter of personal taste. We settle on jobs. We settle on relationships. We settle on a life, a comfortable life, a life we have constructed that may not be perfect, but is pleasant enough that we believe we can stand it for the rest of our living days. We have no imagination. We cease to dream.
Joan Didion once wrote that we "tell ourselves stories in order to live." The line is perfect, because to live is to not necessarily flourish. The stories we tell can sustain us, but it can also trap us, just as life can be affirming, and destructive. When we begin to tell a fiction of acceptance, when the stories we tell are no longer of what is possible, but what is probable and thus inevitable, then those stories close off a world, a life, that can actually be.
In the end, neither you nor I know which story is true. The story where we are an extra, in a play much like the one in the movie Synedoche, NY, where the mere fact that the play continues is the point. Or the other story. The story that we believe as children, and to an extent most of us have, or at least should have, stopped believing now. The story where we get to be the star, where there is something special about us that makes the story of us worth telling at all. I don't know which story is true. But for now, I wish to believe in the fiction that there is this other story out there after all.
Sunday, December 21, 2008
Double Feature
I watched Slumdog Millionaire and the Wrestler recently. I enjoyed them both very much. I found them to be a much needed break in my life.
And when I left the Wrestler Saturday night, I got to thinking about what captivates me about the movies. About why, when everything seems to be falling apart, the first place I run to is the movies.
And I think it's because the movies, blending truth and illusion, reflect an essential conflict of life.
Slumdog and the Wrestler both try to answer something truthfully. Slumdog implicitly asks us, what is the fundamental element of life that keeps us going, and the answer it posits is "hope". It seeks to validate the little nugget in every cynic's heart that secretly wishes all the dreamers have got it right. It says to us: believe. Believe in love at first sight. Believe in people. Believe she still loves you and he won't let you down. Believe that even if you think you've lost her, as long as you never give up, you'll find her again and again.
The Wrestler asks us a simple question as well: what does a real person look like? The answer is not so simple because the people you know hide behind an image of what they want us to see. We all do it. We accentuate our positives and hide the shameful hideousness that we've all got, in different helpings. The Wrestler presents us with every possible visage of a man. The charm, the loneliness, the honest regret and the dishonest regret, the bitterness, the ability to disappoint, as well as what brings him the most joy in the world. It is everything we could possibly know about the man, captured simply in Mickey Rourke's pained gait, battered face and broken heart.
But as convincing as these answers are, they respond to questions that, by definition, cannot be answered. Because how do you really know that hope can sustain us? So what if Jamal and Lathika make it. They're just characters in stories. A made-up anecdote to answer life's most vexing question.
And how do you know what a real person looks like? The titular Wrestler certainly feels real. He regrets things he ought to regret, he lets people down in ways that people who often let others down do. And with him being played by Mickey Rourke, art certainly is imitating life. Yet he's also a crafted man from the pen of a gifted writer, refining tropes that have been used for centuries. Digging deeper, he is simply another evocation of Holden Caufield, charming enough to let you believe he won't let you down again.
In life, you don't know anything for sure. Even the things you feel yourself. I think I have been in love, but it's starting to dawn on me that maybe I just thought I should be. And how will I really know when it's the real thing? I think I've felt pain. But maybe it's just a relative discomfort to my normally comfortable life. How low can I go before I know I'm not just feeling sorry for myself.
But unlike everywhere else, at the movies no one expects truth because the fundamental basis for film is its fiction. So it does not to pretend it can truly answer the unanswerable. It merely asks us to, for about two hours, politely listen to its musings on what might be. To be carried off into a world of its own making, where it answers its own question on its own terms, so that maybe you get an idea or two. And it doesn't ask you to believe it or confirm it. It merely says to us, take a second, imagine, and dream with me.
And when I left the Wrestler Saturday night, I got to thinking about what captivates me about the movies. About why, when everything seems to be falling apart, the first place I run to is the movies.
And I think it's because the movies, blending truth and illusion, reflect an essential conflict of life.
Slumdog and the Wrestler both try to answer something truthfully. Slumdog implicitly asks us, what is the fundamental element of life that keeps us going, and the answer it posits is "hope". It seeks to validate the little nugget in every cynic's heart that secretly wishes all the dreamers have got it right. It says to us: believe. Believe in love at first sight. Believe in people. Believe she still loves you and he won't let you down. Believe that even if you think you've lost her, as long as you never give up, you'll find her again and again.
The Wrestler asks us a simple question as well: what does a real person look like? The answer is not so simple because the people you know hide behind an image of what they want us to see. We all do it. We accentuate our positives and hide the shameful hideousness that we've all got, in different helpings. The Wrestler presents us with every possible visage of a man. The charm, the loneliness, the honest regret and the dishonest regret, the bitterness, the ability to disappoint, as well as what brings him the most joy in the world. It is everything we could possibly know about the man, captured simply in Mickey Rourke's pained gait, battered face and broken heart.
But as convincing as these answers are, they respond to questions that, by definition, cannot be answered. Because how do you really know that hope can sustain us? So what if Jamal and Lathika make it. They're just characters in stories. A made-up anecdote to answer life's most vexing question.
And how do you know what a real person looks like? The titular Wrestler certainly feels real. He regrets things he ought to regret, he lets people down in ways that people who often let others down do. And with him being played by Mickey Rourke, art certainly is imitating life. Yet he's also a crafted man from the pen of a gifted writer, refining tropes that have been used for centuries. Digging deeper, he is simply another evocation of Holden Caufield, charming enough to let you believe he won't let you down again.
In life, you don't know anything for sure. Even the things you feel yourself. I think I have been in love, but it's starting to dawn on me that maybe I just thought I should be. And how will I really know when it's the real thing? I think I've felt pain. But maybe it's just a relative discomfort to my normally comfortable life. How low can I go before I know I'm not just feeling sorry for myself.
But unlike everywhere else, at the movies no one expects truth because the fundamental basis for film is its fiction. So it does not to pretend it can truly answer the unanswerable. It merely asks us to, for about two hours, politely listen to its musings on what might be. To be carried off into a world of its own making, where it answers its own question on its own terms, so that maybe you get an idea or two. And it doesn't ask you to believe it or confirm it. It merely says to us, take a second, imagine, and dream with me.
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Bonfire of our Vanities
I’ve always wanted to know how other people feel things. Because I'm fairly sure I know how I feel things - although by no means certain - but I want to know if that's typical, or even approximately typical.
And now that I’ve met Frank Wheeler from Revolutionary Road, I am even more curious. Because I’ve never met a character more unpleasant, more unlikable, and more unflinchingly realistic and identifiable than he.
The reason the book strikes such a chord, for me, isn’t because it captures a time and place of American life. Rather, it is because it captures something timeless and timelessly dark of human life through the ages. It shows that just as universal as our capacity for love and hate, is our basic vanity.
Because everything that Frank – and April too, but mostly Frank – does is self-centered and self-obsessed. Everything he does is to make himself appear to be the man he wants to be, to the point where the question of who is the real Frank Wheeler cannot be asked, because we aren’t even sure the answer exists.
Ever cry from sadness until you were pretty sure you were doing it because you were supposed to? Every say something lovely and no matter how much you told yourself it was for another person, a little part of you felt really good about yourself about it. Ever feel something because you think you should have felt it, until you weren’t sure what you were really feeling anymore? I want to say I haven’t. I can’t guarantee I haven’t.
And when someone recently asked what moment in all of humanity’s history that I wanted to see, I answered vaguely that it would be the moment where someone did the nicest, most selfless thing for another person. I don’t know why I answered that then, but after reading Revolutionary Road, I’m pretty sure I want to know, mostly because I don’t know if that moment could exist, and if it did, what it would look like and whether it would be, well, underwhelming. I don’t need an affirmation of humanity or anything – I think we all accept that people are flawed – but it would be nice to know that people are better than you think them capable.
And now that I’ve met Frank Wheeler from Revolutionary Road, I am even more curious. Because I’ve never met a character more unpleasant, more unlikable, and more unflinchingly realistic and identifiable than he.
The reason the book strikes such a chord, for me, isn’t because it captures a time and place of American life. Rather, it is because it captures something timeless and timelessly dark of human life through the ages. It shows that just as universal as our capacity for love and hate, is our basic vanity.
Because everything that Frank – and April too, but mostly Frank – does is self-centered and self-obsessed. Everything he does is to make himself appear to be the man he wants to be, to the point where the question of who is the real Frank Wheeler cannot be asked, because we aren’t even sure the answer exists.
Ever cry from sadness until you were pretty sure you were doing it because you were supposed to? Every say something lovely and no matter how much you told yourself it was for another person, a little part of you felt really good about yourself about it. Ever feel something because you think you should have felt it, until you weren’t sure what you were really feeling anymore? I want to say I haven’t. I can’t guarantee I haven’t.
And when someone recently asked what moment in all of humanity’s history that I wanted to see, I answered vaguely that it would be the moment where someone did the nicest, most selfless thing for another person. I don’t know why I answered that then, but after reading Revolutionary Road, I’m pretty sure I want to know, mostly because I don’t know if that moment could exist, and if it did, what it would look like and whether it would be, well, underwhelming. I don’t need an affirmation of humanity or anything – I think we all accept that people are flawed – but it would be nice to know that people are better than you think them capable.
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
I've Seen it All
I listened to this interview today that Anne Hathaway gave about Rachel Getting Married. In it, she says what helped her understand Kym, her character, was the Elliott Smith song “Say Yes”. Then she recited the last few lines awkwardly, which was awesome for two reasons: one being that all Elliott Smith lyrics sound kind of awkward – it is this intrinsic awkwardness combined with his angelic voice that makes his songs heartbreakingly beautiful, as if explicitly making the implicit clear, that he has so much to give within himself but the construct of the world (i.e. language), won’t let him – and because it’s Anne Hathaway, and she’s cute, and slightly cutely awkward – which juxtaposes nicely with the fact that she’s stunning to look at, meaning that the personage of her is very much like an Elliott Smith song as well.
And everything ties together, which is, of course, nice.
And everything ties together, which is, of course, nice.
Monday, October 6, 2008
Hey There Mrs. Lovely
As much as Anne Hathaway’s performance in Rachel Getting Married is equal parts beautiful and enigmatic, and as much as I love her right about now, the movie works because it isn’t about her.
To make the movie about Kym is to get trapped in her own self-absorption and self-destruction. And as much fun as that is in brief doses (and as charming as Kym can be, even when she is setting fires all around her), it would be falling down the same trite-storytelling rabbit-hole that too many directors have gone.
Rachel Getting Married, instead, is about family. It’s about Kym and Rachel and Paul and Abby and all their shit. Movies and art and music often mine romantic love and its complexities because, it seems, to mine issues of family and love is so much more difficult. Romantic love invites fiction because it often involves making up stories, to ourselves and to the other person. And as idealistic notions mix with cold hard reality, something new forms, and new narratives of our own lives are created.
Family love is to be born into a pre-set of narratives to which you merely contribute. You are no longer the star of your own film, but rather a player in an ensemble cast. And while those narratives change, we are swept along them just as much as we contribute to them. Your own love, hate, envy, anger, and joy are mixed with everyone else’s, and there are so many variables that the ensuing current carries every one towards destinations unknown.
Rachel Getting Married not only captures the family through example, but in spirit as well. Because just as Kym, and Hathaway for that matter, threatens to run away with the film with a brilliant performance, the film steadfastly refuses to let her. It will explore Rachel’s long-simmering resentment, Paul’s disassociation, and Abby’s coldness and ability to disappoint her daughters. It will show moments of genuine tenderness. It will show the inextricable bonds that tie them together even as they break each others’ hearts. It will show that no matter how we try to steal the show, the family is a swirl of everybody’s emotions, and it’s not all good, and it’s not all bad, it is something that truly approximates what the notion of love is.
And when the hurricane that is Kym leaves after the wedding, we get a beautifully calm moment with Rachel. A nice little moment of exhale and release. Love, the movie is telling us, is life affirming precisely because it is so hard. It is to emerge on the other side of the storm, worse for weary, better for it, and waiting for the next one to come.
To make the movie about Kym is to get trapped in her own self-absorption and self-destruction. And as much fun as that is in brief doses (and as charming as Kym can be, even when she is setting fires all around her), it would be falling down the same trite-storytelling rabbit-hole that too many directors have gone.
Rachel Getting Married, instead, is about family. It’s about Kym and Rachel and Paul and Abby and all their shit. Movies and art and music often mine romantic love and its complexities because, it seems, to mine issues of family and love is so much more difficult. Romantic love invites fiction because it often involves making up stories, to ourselves and to the other person. And as idealistic notions mix with cold hard reality, something new forms, and new narratives of our own lives are created.
Family love is to be born into a pre-set of narratives to which you merely contribute. You are no longer the star of your own film, but rather a player in an ensemble cast. And while those narratives change, we are swept along them just as much as we contribute to them. Your own love, hate, envy, anger, and joy are mixed with everyone else’s, and there are so many variables that the ensuing current carries every one towards destinations unknown.
Rachel Getting Married not only captures the family through example, but in spirit as well. Because just as Kym, and Hathaway for that matter, threatens to run away with the film with a brilliant performance, the film steadfastly refuses to let her. It will explore Rachel’s long-simmering resentment, Paul’s disassociation, and Abby’s coldness and ability to disappoint her daughters. It will show moments of genuine tenderness. It will show the inextricable bonds that tie them together even as they break each others’ hearts. It will show that no matter how we try to steal the show, the family is a swirl of everybody’s emotions, and it’s not all good, and it’s not all bad, it is something that truly approximates what the notion of love is.
And when the hurricane that is Kym leaves after the wedding, we get a beautifully calm moment with Rachel. A nice little moment of exhale and release. Love, the movie is telling us, is life affirming precisely because it is so hard. It is to emerge on the other side of the storm, worse for weary, better for it, and waiting for the next one to come.
Thursday, October 2, 2008
Anything you love
I saw a film recently called “Happy Go Lucky”, a nice little Mike Leigh film with a charming lead. I liked it a lot.
I liked it for its un-ironic look at happiness. For its presentation of a world where an optimist isn’t played for Panglossian laughs, but rather celebrated as the only sensible way to live through the gloom of every day life.
But ironically enough, this movie made me think of sadness all the more. Because all I wanted to do afterward was to see a Wong Kar-Wai film.
Of all the filmmakers in the world, Wong Kar-Wai has possibly the most fervent cult. This is not because of his brash artistic style, as many directors have the same. It isn’t because his movies are perfect. Objectively speaking, they are not. Plots meander, characters speak in a heightened sense of atmosphere, and if he doesn’t get the tone right, it all goes awfully wrong (i.e. the Natalie Portman storyline in My Blueberry Nights).
Rather, the reason I am devoted to him just as rabidly as the rest of his cult is, is because of his celebration of the opposite ethos of “Happy Go Lucky”. If Mike Leigh tells us that driving forward and looking on bright side keep us sane, then Wong Kar-Wai tells us that no matter what we do, we will end up within ourselves, broken by loss, with only our regrets, our pain and yes, our sadness.
There are many moments that illustrate this. But perhaps my favorite is the end of 2046. When Chow Mo-wan (Tony Leung) walks away, yet again, from someone who loves him (Bai Ling, played by Zhang Ziyi_. He knows that the woman he loves, Su Lizhen (Maggie Cheung), will never come back.
And it’s his look. It’s sad, knowing that the one thing we all have to give to another, love, is ruined. His capacity for connection in this world is severed. All he has left is loneliness and despair. He says ruefully, “Love is all a matter of timing. It’s no good meeting the right person too soon or too late. If I’d live in another time or place…my story might have had a very different ending.”
But his look is a mixture of sadness and something else. Something enigmatic that I didn’t understand on first viewing. But now I do. It’s an acceptance turning to an embrace. An acceptance of the dark days that will be the rest of his life. An embrace of the unavoidable fate. As the last words of the movie tell it: “He didn’t turn back. It’s as if he boarded a very long train headed for a drowsy future through the unfathomable night.”
I liked it for its un-ironic look at happiness. For its presentation of a world where an optimist isn’t played for Panglossian laughs, but rather celebrated as the only sensible way to live through the gloom of every day life.
But ironically enough, this movie made me think of sadness all the more. Because all I wanted to do afterward was to see a Wong Kar-Wai film.
Of all the filmmakers in the world, Wong Kar-Wai has possibly the most fervent cult. This is not because of his brash artistic style, as many directors have the same. It isn’t because his movies are perfect. Objectively speaking, they are not. Plots meander, characters speak in a heightened sense of atmosphere, and if he doesn’t get the tone right, it all goes awfully wrong (i.e. the Natalie Portman storyline in My Blueberry Nights).
Rather, the reason I am devoted to him just as rabidly as the rest of his cult is, is because of his celebration of the opposite ethos of “Happy Go Lucky”. If Mike Leigh tells us that driving forward and looking on bright side keep us sane, then Wong Kar-Wai tells us that no matter what we do, we will end up within ourselves, broken by loss, with only our regrets, our pain and yes, our sadness.
There are many moments that illustrate this. But perhaps my favorite is the end of 2046. When Chow Mo-wan (Tony Leung) walks away, yet again, from someone who loves him (Bai Ling, played by Zhang Ziyi_. He knows that the woman he loves, Su Lizhen (Maggie Cheung), will never come back.
And it’s his look. It’s sad, knowing that the one thing we all have to give to another, love, is ruined. His capacity for connection in this world is severed. All he has left is loneliness and despair. He says ruefully, “Love is all a matter of timing. It’s no good meeting the right person too soon or too late. If I’d live in another time or place…my story might have had a very different ending.”
But his look is a mixture of sadness and something else. Something enigmatic that I didn’t understand on first viewing. But now I do. It’s an acceptance turning to an embrace. An acceptance of the dark days that will be the rest of his life. An embrace of the unavoidable fate. As the last words of the movie tell it: “He didn’t turn back. It’s as if he boarded a very long train headed for a drowsy future through the unfathomable night.”
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