2010_2_22 Transit Ritual
Many years ago when I was courting my wife I read at a dinner party held at my future in-laws home in Woodside, California, the poem “Death Shall Have No Dominion” by Dylan Thomas. It did not go over well. I was told that the subject matter was “inappropriate” and “offensive and morbid” in polite society. In brief, death as a topic was off-limits at family gatherings, which should be “gay and enjoyable.”
This was a typical reaction for the average American. The incident occurred nearly 50 years ago, yet not much has changed since. Death is still a taboo topic and the bereaved can feel overwhelmed and numb when a love one suddenly dies. Some kind of mental and emotional rehearsal needs to be available so people aren’t left out on a limb and inconsolable. Death is, after all, a big part of life. Almost 20 years ago some Japanese film producers decided to make a film about death, how it is handled in rural Japan, with the typical aesthetic flair of the Japanese. It took a while to sort things out, to find the right screenwriter and Director (Yojiro Takita) and to cast the right people. To their big surprise the film, called “Departures,” not only did well at the box office, it won an Oscar in 2008 for Best Foreign Language Film. The Director discusses the difficulties in making the film in the Special Features and why he and his associates wanted to make a film about death.
A young cellist, Daigo Kobayashi (Masahiro Motoki), loses his job as a cellist in a large orchestra when it is dissolved, so he decides that he and his wife, Mika, should go back to Yamagata, the small town where he was born and raised. He has inherited his mother’s house, which Mika likes, but he needs to find a job. He runs across an ad in the paper about “departures,” which he assumes has something to do with being a travel Agency. But when he meets the boss, Sasaki (Tsutomu Yamazaki), he explains that “departures” was a misprint for the word Nokanshi which translates as “the departed.” In other words, the job entails the ceremonial preparation of the deceased for burial or cremation. Leave it to the Japanese to come up with a profession unimaginable in America. The people who perform this ritual are called encoffiners. The owner of the business, going on instinct, is positive Daigo is the man for the job, so he gives him a generous advance to keep him on the job. Diago decides to give the job a try but to not tell Mika what it is because she would be appalled by the very idea. It is not what you would call high prestige employment, plus she has a hang-up about death and dying. The first ceremony involves an old woman who has been dead for two weeks; it is a worst case scenario. Diago barfs repeatedly, but survives the experience. But he hangs in there and eventually his basic sensitivity and keen aesthetic sense proves the boss’ instinct was right: he turns into an artist with the ceremony and the bereaved families are always deeply appreciative of his touch and eloquence as he washes and redresses the body always with great modesty as the family watches him perform the ritual. However, when Mika finds out what he was really doing she left him. She did not want to be touched by anybody so “unclean.” Realizing he has found his niche, he decides to wait her out, hoping she will come back. After he has gone deeper into his craft, she does come back, and when a mutual friend dies she watches her husband perform, and she recognizes how good he is at his trade and how much carefulness and sensitivity he brings to the ritual. When Diago’s estranged father dies, who he hasn’t seen for 30 years, it is Mika who persuades him to go to his father, and when the local undertakers come in and act like boors, he pushes them aside to perform the ritual on his father, with tears running down his cheeks. It is a tender scene and quite cathartic for Diago.
There is much else to be appreciated in “Departures.” There is cello music throughout the film and we see Diago playing his cello out in the landscape. His relationship with his boss and trainer is a major subplot. The role and meaning of the “stone letters” is explored. Interestingly, the first thing encoffiners want to do after doing the ritual is to eat. His boss makes the comment that “the living eat the dead.”
Let me close this review with a personal comment. There is talk in the film about death merely being a transit to the next world. Is there a next world? My reflections on that question have long remained unresolved. I remain an agnostic, feeling there is no way to know if there is an ‘other side.’ A cartoon I saw the other day can sum up my attitude. It was one panel ink drawing showing three people standing alongside a new grave. One of the bystanders says to his companions, “He was a devout agnostic.” The epitaph on the tombstone reads, SEE YOU LATER—MAYBE.
Monday, February 22, 2010
Saturday, February 20, 2010
The Humble Stumble of Tiger Woods
2010_2_20 The Humble Stumble of Tiger Woods
Like everyone one else I watched the Tiger Woods event on television Friday morning. He looked stricken, chastened and nervous, like many politicians caught up in the same tar-baby covered with honey. Like them he thought he could get away with it. It was a schizoid dream of having the best of two worlds but a collision of contradictory worlds was inevitable. Now he stood there, naked before the multitude, his air of invincibility gone and the supreme self-confidence shelved for the time being while he tries to pick up the pieces of his shattered persona and domain. Two dozen people sat there staring at him. They were grim-faced and silent. I noticed his mother in the front row. The rest were close friends and business associates.
It was a scripted performance, his notes were in front of him and he referred to them often, and he was rather robotic in his delivery and he held his emotions in check. His annunciating was slow and precise; each word fell like a pearl into a pond. I felt lenient toward the approach he felt compelled to take at this stage of the game. He was swimming in new depths here, so he set up boundaries to what could happen. For the first time since last Thanksgiving he was coming out from under the rock where he had been hiding to do his mea culpa before his friends and associates and the television audience, which had to be vast and global. Once again he was there to say”Hello world,” but with a different face on and with a much different message to convey. As he started to speak he looked like a man who would rather have a root canal operation then admit in public he was at fault and was in therapy because he knew he needed help to sort things out and to move forward. No one likes to broadcast his mistakes or to reopen wounds for all to see. But he bit the bullet and made his apologies, several times over in fact, and was hard on himself for being such a doofus. The performance took a little over 13 minutes.
One of the more interesting highlights of the speech was the remarks about fame and the feeling of entitlement it gave him. His worldwide fame and the stature he had acquired in the Sports World-- and beyond-- eventually made him feel special, a member of an elite class of persons who didn’t have to obey the rules that everyone else does; besides, he reasoned, no one was going to find out. He figured he had worked hard his whole life and therefore he was entitled to enjoy some of the temptations that came his way. What’s wrong with a little extra fun? It only goes to prove that the celebrity context can be toxic and a ready-made disaster zone if one loses perspective and wanders off track. Perhaps his return to the faith of his mother, Buddhism, can help him get back on track. He said he had grown up a Buddhist but had drifted away the last several years. Perhaps it can become his bridge over troubled waters.
It is doubtful his speech and the numerous mea culpa along the way will satisfy the shrill moralists waiting to ask more intimate questions, seeking to amplify the salacious aspect of his transgressions, while condemning him with more vigor than before. Most sports fan don’t give a shit about his personal life or the kind of choices he has made on that level, and view all the moralizing and mud-slinging as media hoopla. They want him to get back on the golf course where he belongs, where he was born to shine. All the rest is public theater, part of the Media circus that always seems to accompany the stumbles or scandals of wealthy celebrities. It’s entertainment for the bored drones of our society, a distraction from the daily grind rife with its various problems, from unemployment to sexual dysfunction.
Roland Martin, normally a political contributor on CNN, addressed this notion that Tiger owes the public an explanation of his behavior. I agreed what he had to say about this issue. “Tiger, you don’t owe me or anyone else. I’m sick of those sanctimonious folks who are blabbering about Woods needing to be grilled about his private behavior. Look, Tiger Woods didn’t cheat on me. He’s not my daddy, mother, cousin, church members, neighbor or friend. He didn’t let me down or crush my view of him. He is not and never was my role model.” He went on to say he owes an apology to his wife, mother, some friends, and his children, when they come of age.
The trouble is Tiger has bought into the American Dream and that includes jumping through all the hoops that will mollify his critics, neutralize his sponsors, please his business partners, soothe the Public, keep the money rolling in and expand the legend of Tiger Woods.
What was it Bill Clinton said about his transgression? ”I did it because I could.” Tiger wasn’t any different.
Like everyone one else I watched the Tiger Woods event on television Friday morning. He looked stricken, chastened and nervous, like many politicians caught up in the same tar-baby covered with honey. Like them he thought he could get away with it. It was a schizoid dream of having the best of two worlds but a collision of contradictory worlds was inevitable. Now he stood there, naked before the multitude, his air of invincibility gone and the supreme self-confidence shelved for the time being while he tries to pick up the pieces of his shattered persona and domain. Two dozen people sat there staring at him. They were grim-faced and silent. I noticed his mother in the front row. The rest were close friends and business associates.
It was a scripted performance, his notes were in front of him and he referred to them often, and he was rather robotic in his delivery and he held his emotions in check. His annunciating was slow and precise; each word fell like a pearl into a pond. I felt lenient toward the approach he felt compelled to take at this stage of the game. He was swimming in new depths here, so he set up boundaries to what could happen. For the first time since last Thanksgiving he was coming out from under the rock where he had been hiding to do his mea culpa before his friends and associates and the television audience, which had to be vast and global. Once again he was there to say”Hello world,” but with a different face on and with a much different message to convey. As he started to speak he looked like a man who would rather have a root canal operation then admit in public he was at fault and was in therapy because he knew he needed help to sort things out and to move forward. No one likes to broadcast his mistakes or to reopen wounds for all to see. But he bit the bullet and made his apologies, several times over in fact, and was hard on himself for being such a doofus. The performance took a little over 13 minutes.
One of the more interesting highlights of the speech was the remarks about fame and the feeling of entitlement it gave him. His worldwide fame and the stature he had acquired in the Sports World-- and beyond-- eventually made him feel special, a member of an elite class of persons who didn’t have to obey the rules that everyone else does; besides, he reasoned, no one was going to find out. He figured he had worked hard his whole life and therefore he was entitled to enjoy some of the temptations that came his way. What’s wrong with a little extra fun? It only goes to prove that the celebrity context can be toxic and a ready-made disaster zone if one loses perspective and wanders off track. Perhaps his return to the faith of his mother, Buddhism, can help him get back on track. He said he had grown up a Buddhist but had drifted away the last several years. Perhaps it can become his bridge over troubled waters.
It is doubtful his speech and the numerous mea culpa along the way will satisfy the shrill moralists waiting to ask more intimate questions, seeking to amplify the salacious aspect of his transgressions, while condemning him with more vigor than before. Most sports fan don’t give a shit about his personal life or the kind of choices he has made on that level, and view all the moralizing and mud-slinging as media hoopla. They want him to get back on the golf course where he belongs, where he was born to shine. All the rest is public theater, part of the Media circus that always seems to accompany the stumbles or scandals of wealthy celebrities. It’s entertainment for the bored drones of our society, a distraction from the daily grind rife with its various problems, from unemployment to sexual dysfunction.
Roland Martin, normally a political contributor on CNN, addressed this notion that Tiger owes the public an explanation of his behavior. I agreed what he had to say about this issue. “Tiger, you don’t owe me or anyone else. I’m sick of those sanctimonious folks who are blabbering about Woods needing to be grilled about his private behavior. Look, Tiger Woods didn’t cheat on me. He’s not my daddy, mother, cousin, church members, neighbor or friend. He didn’t let me down or crush my view of him. He is not and never was my role model.” He went on to say he owes an apology to his wife, mother, some friends, and his children, when they come of age.
The trouble is Tiger has bought into the American Dream and that includes jumping through all the hoops that will mollify his critics, neutralize his sponsors, please his business partners, soothe the Public, keep the money rolling in and expand the legend of Tiger Woods.
What was it Bill Clinton said about his transgression? ”I did it because I could.” Tiger wasn’t any different.
Friday, February 19, 2010
Two Movies: Babes and Baloney
2010_2_17 Two Movies
I watched two movies last night, one a melodrama based on the trials and tribulations of two sexually confused and compromised women, the other a far-fetched fantasy about the lacks in our justice system, with a plot so extreme and impossible it would be laughable if it wasn’t so gory and bloody.
“The Burning Plain” was directed by Guillermo Arriaga, a Mexican filmmaker who has made three strong films early in this decade (“Amores Perros,” “21 Grams,” and “Babel”) but this effort is very weak by comparison. “The Burning Plain” is a side by side story on a parallel course, with totally different conclusions. Gina (Kim Basinger) is an unhappily married woman with four kids and an outside relationship with a Mexican man who lives in a dilapidated trailer out in a Southwestern desert, Texas would be my guess. At every opportunity Gina skips out to rendezvous with the Mexican man for some sex. (Both women make their mandatory naked scene in this movie.) Actually, the movie opens up with a scene of the trailer being consumed by flames; then when two teenage boys approach the burnt-out husk of the trailer we learn that Gina and the man died in the fire and that her lover was the father of the two teenage boys. (Most of Gina’s story is told in flashbacks.) One of the boys starts a romance with Gina’s teenage daughter and she becomes pregnant and eventually runs off with the boy, thus repeating the mistakes made by her mother. Later on, as one story plays off the other, we find out that the daughter had something to do with what started the fire that killed her mother and her lover. It raises the question did the two youngsters get involved with each other in sympathy with the lost parent of the other, to assuage some guilt that each had for different reasons? That possibility gave the movie some needed emotional texture.
Sylvia (CharlizeTheron) is a hostess at an upscale sea-side restaurant, probably in Northern California. Her story opens with her standing naked at an open window, shocking some female passer-bys who hustle their kids away from such a terrible sight. Sleeping in her bed is one of the cooks from the restaurant (John Corbett). Not long after that she is seen having indifferent sex with one of her customers, a virtual stranger, someone she had just met. We learn that promiscuity is her bag, something that goes back to guilt and sadness she feels over a daughter she gave up after a romance with a Mexican man. A Mexican man is seen following her around and she finally confronts him half naked assuming sex is what he is after. It turns out he is an emissary for the Mexican man who fathered the her child, now a 14 years old girl who had works with her father who is a pilot that sprayed pesticide over farm land in Mexico. But the father had recently crashed the plane and might not survive his injuries, so he had asked his friend to take the girl to her birth mother who she should get to know no matter what happens to him. Sylvia rejects the idea at first but eventually her maternal instinct kicks in and she does take the girl in and begin a relationship with her. So her story has a positive resolution compared to Gina’s misadventure. She can go on, her load lightened.
The second movie,”Law Abiding Citizen,” opens with an ugly and extremely brutal home invasion. Two dirt bags kill the wife and daughter of Clyde Shelton (Gerard Butler) who seems to be a wealthy inventor of some sort. He is the unfortunate witness to the death of both his loved ones. He is the law abiding citizen of the title who is forced to take matters into his own hands because the prosecuting attorney, Nick Price (Jamie Foxx), when making a deal to “win” the case allows the one who did the killing to escape the death penalty and any significant jail time. After a pause of uncertain length, Shelton comes roaring back as the dark avenger. He is arrested right off the bat for the gruesome killing and dismemberment of Darby, the killer who got off. And somehow he seems to be responsible for the death of several people involved with case, like the other home invader, their lawyer, the judge at the trial, one of Nick’s assistants, and the D.A., all die by mysterious and arcane ways. Shelton seems unstoppable in his rampage, as he sees it, against injustice. The D.A. and Price meet with someone in a covert government agency who knows Shelton. He is a death-dealing specialist for , presumably, the CIA. He is known as “The Brain,” and if Clyde wants you dead, you are dead. ( I think Clyde could be a spin-off of Liam Neesum’s “specialist “ in the box office hit, “Taken.”) When he realizes what he is up against Price digs in and locks horns with The Brain and I probably don’t have to tell you who will win the competition?
There were giant holes in this movie and situations that scored in terms of imagination but were too bizarre and ridiculous to have actually worked and would have had Shelton needing a construction Crew and a battery of electronic wizards and several months to pull off, like, to name one, a long well-made tunnel from at a nearby warehouse to a cell in the Solitary Confinement area in the prison where Shelton was kept. He could “step out” any time he wanted to initiate his murder and mayhem on the outside.
Gary Gray, the director of “Law Abiding Citizen,” is an experienced director who seems to specialize in thrillers. His best known films are “The Italian Job,” and “Trapped,” both thrillers with plenty of imagination that starred Charlize Theron, among others. “The Negotiator “is another one of his films, another thriller. “Law Abiding Citizen” is more a reach than his other films. To enjoy the film suspend all sense and sanity—and hold your nose, especially when the bloody brain parts spatter.
I watched two movies last night, one a melodrama based on the trials and tribulations of two sexually confused and compromised women, the other a far-fetched fantasy about the lacks in our justice system, with a plot so extreme and impossible it would be laughable if it wasn’t so gory and bloody.
“The Burning Plain” was directed by Guillermo Arriaga, a Mexican filmmaker who has made three strong films early in this decade (“Amores Perros,” “21 Grams,” and “Babel”) but this effort is very weak by comparison. “The Burning Plain” is a side by side story on a parallel course, with totally different conclusions. Gina (Kim Basinger) is an unhappily married woman with four kids and an outside relationship with a Mexican man who lives in a dilapidated trailer out in a Southwestern desert, Texas would be my guess. At every opportunity Gina skips out to rendezvous with the Mexican man for some sex. (Both women make their mandatory naked scene in this movie.) Actually, the movie opens up with a scene of the trailer being consumed by flames; then when two teenage boys approach the burnt-out husk of the trailer we learn that Gina and the man died in the fire and that her lover was the father of the two teenage boys. (Most of Gina’s story is told in flashbacks.) One of the boys starts a romance with Gina’s teenage daughter and she becomes pregnant and eventually runs off with the boy, thus repeating the mistakes made by her mother. Later on, as one story plays off the other, we find out that the daughter had something to do with what started the fire that killed her mother and her lover. It raises the question did the two youngsters get involved with each other in sympathy with the lost parent of the other, to assuage some guilt that each had for different reasons? That possibility gave the movie some needed emotional texture.
Sylvia (CharlizeTheron) is a hostess at an upscale sea-side restaurant, probably in Northern California. Her story opens with her standing naked at an open window, shocking some female passer-bys who hustle their kids away from such a terrible sight. Sleeping in her bed is one of the cooks from the restaurant (John Corbett). Not long after that she is seen having indifferent sex with one of her customers, a virtual stranger, someone she had just met. We learn that promiscuity is her bag, something that goes back to guilt and sadness she feels over a daughter she gave up after a romance with a Mexican man. A Mexican man is seen following her around and she finally confronts him half naked assuming sex is what he is after. It turns out he is an emissary for the Mexican man who fathered the her child, now a 14 years old girl who had works with her father who is a pilot that sprayed pesticide over farm land in Mexico. But the father had recently crashed the plane and might not survive his injuries, so he had asked his friend to take the girl to her birth mother who she should get to know no matter what happens to him. Sylvia rejects the idea at first but eventually her maternal instinct kicks in and she does take the girl in and begin a relationship with her. So her story has a positive resolution compared to Gina’s misadventure. She can go on, her load lightened.
The second movie,”Law Abiding Citizen,” opens with an ugly and extremely brutal home invasion. Two dirt bags kill the wife and daughter of Clyde Shelton (Gerard Butler) who seems to be a wealthy inventor of some sort. He is the unfortunate witness to the death of both his loved ones. He is the law abiding citizen of the title who is forced to take matters into his own hands because the prosecuting attorney, Nick Price (Jamie Foxx), when making a deal to “win” the case allows the one who did the killing to escape the death penalty and any significant jail time. After a pause of uncertain length, Shelton comes roaring back as the dark avenger. He is arrested right off the bat for the gruesome killing and dismemberment of Darby, the killer who got off. And somehow he seems to be responsible for the death of several people involved with case, like the other home invader, their lawyer, the judge at the trial, one of Nick’s assistants, and the D.A., all die by mysterious and arcane ways. Shelton seems unstoppable in his rampage, as he sees it, against injustice. The D.A. and Price meet with someone in a covert government agency who knows Shelton. He is a death-dealing specialist for , presumably, the CIA. He is known as “The Brain,” and if Clyde wants you dead, you are dead. ( I think Clyde could be a spin-off of Liam Neesum’s “specialist “ in the box office hit, “Taken.”) When he realizes what he is up against Price digs in and locks horns with The Brain and I probably don’t have to tell you who will win the competition?
There were giant holes in this movie and situations that scored in terms of imagination but were too bizarre and ridiculous to have actually worked and would have had Shelton needing a construction Crew and a battery of electronic wizards and several months to pull off, like, to name one, a long well-made tunnel from at a nearby warehouse to a cell in the Solitary Confinement area in the prison where Shelton was kept. He could “step out” any time he wanted to initiate his murder and mayhem on the outside.
Gary Gray, the director of “Law Abiding Citizen,” is an experienced director who seems to specialize in thrillers. His best known films are “The Italian Job,” and “Trapped,” both thrillers with plenty of imagination that starred Charlize Theron, among others. “The Negotiator “is another one of his films, another thriller. “Law Abiding Citizen” is more a reach than his other films. To enjoy the film suspend all sense and sanity—and hold your nose, especially when the bloody brain parts spatter.
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Tuttle His Way to Art
2010_2_16 Tuttle His Way to Art
I first became aware of the artist Richard Tuttle in the series called ART: 21 Then I saw the documentary “Herb and Dorothy,” about the New York couple , Herb and Dorothy Vogel who over a 40 year period managed to put together a fine collection of contemporary art on a low income budget. Tuttle was featured in the film as an artist the Vogels often collected before he made a name for himself. They were also very good friends. It was in that film that I discovered there was a short film about Tuttle available through NETFLIX. It was called “Never Not an Artist.” What follows is my response to Tuttle and the work I saw in the film.
As a young man Richard Tuttle was an easel painter who worked at Betty Parson’s Gallery in New York City, the gallery that became best known for being the first to show the work of all the major Abstract Expressionists. Parson used to tell young Richard that AE was a sign of an expanding universe. He reacted to that idea, figuring that there must be an equal force going in the opposite direction; so while the AE painters worked large, often on a monumental scale, he would shrink his art and work on a small scale, and that is what he did for about 40 years. The work that epitomized that small scale in the extreme was his notorious 4 inch piece of rope that he nailed laterally to a gallery wall. (It was on a par with Duchamp’s “Urinal” and caused almost as much fuss.) That work was a step away from an Art of Nothingness; indeed, Tuttle has been dancing on a razor’s edge between something barely-there and something almost-not there. Sometimes the work can approach being invisible. I am thinking of the octagonal piece on the gallery wall that was a mere shade different than the color of the wall. He can resemble a magician practicing sleight of hand: now you see it, now you don’t. That is Tuttle’s world, his comfort zone.
He is unconventional in his use of materials. He likes off-beat materials, like crepe paper, plywood, bubble wrap, thin wire, tree branches, tape, nails, and once in a while, paint. He has sometimes worked with simple shapes that resembled letter forms; other times he used string laid out in simple patterns on the floor. One shape made by a piece of string was a semi-circle called “Hill.” Combining wood and paint was about as close as he ever got to wobbly rectangles on the wall. Close in controversy to the piece of rope were the three dimensional pieces of wire. He would affix a very thin wire into an arrangement on the wall, attach it with small nails, draw a feint line with pencil and figure in the shadows cast by the wire in the design. It made for a very subtle and delicate work of art. The Vogels owned one of those pieces and were very fond of it.
One is constantly struck by the bare-bones simplicity of Tuttle’s ideas. They are like a naked haiku, so to speak, or the ultimate understatement-- a whisper in the dark. He is usually classed as a minimalist, but I think he is an idea man and wittier than most minimalists—and his DNA contains a shot of Dada as well. In the film he said that only one in tem people understands what his art is all about. Much of his work provokes and puzzles a lot of people, as his stuff is a radical challenge to many gallery visitors. To see his things in a gallery can be disorienting and off-putting. You don’t find a series of regular rectangles aligned on the walls.
I was happy to see the Vogels again in the film and Tuttle with them in their New York apartment. And Tuttle is now a westerner, living in a nice studio in New Mexico, near the same small town that Georgia O’Keefe lived for many years. He seems to feeding of f the deep space of the high desert and the lovely light and dark patterns of the area.
I first became aware of the artist Richard Tuttle in the series called ART: 21 Then I saw the documentary “Herb and Dorothy,” about the New York couple , Herb and Dorothy Vogel who over a 40 year period managed to put together a fine collection of contemporary art on a low income budget. Tuttle was featured in the film as an artist the Vogels often collected before he made a name for himself. They were also very good friends. It was in that film that I discovered there was a short film about Tuttle available through NETFLIX. It was called “Never Not an Artist.” What follows is my response to Tuttle and the work I saw in the film.
As a young man Richard Tuttle was an easel painter who worked at Betty Parson’s Gallery in New York City, the gallery that became best known for being the first to show the work of all the major Abstract Expressionists. Parson used to tell young Richard that AE was a sign of an expanding universe. He reacted to that idea, figuring that there must be an equal force going in the opposite direction; so while the AE painters worked large, often on a monumental scale, he would shrink his art and work on a small scale, and that is what he did for about 40 years. The work that epitomized that small scale in the extreme was his notorious 4 inch piece of rope that he nailed laterally to a gallery wall. (It was on a par with Duchamp’s “Urinal” and caused almost as much fuss.) That work was a step away from an Art of Nothingness; indeed, Tuttle has been dancing on a razor’s edge between something barely-there and something almost-not there. Sometimes the work can approach being invisible. I am thinking of the octagonal piece on the gallery wall that was a mere shade different than the color of the wall. He can resemble a magician practicing sleight of hand: now you see it, now you don’t. That is Tuttle’s world, his comfort zone.
He is unconventional in his use of materials. He likes off-beat materials, like crepe paper, plywood, bubble wrap, thin wire, tree branches, tape, nails, and once in a while, paint. He has sometimes worked with simple shapes that resembled letter forms; other times he used string laid out in simple patterns on the floor. One shape made by a piece of string was a semi-circle called “Hill.” Combining wood and paint was about as close as he ever got to wobbly rectangles on the wall. Close in controversy to the piece of rope were the three dimensional pieces of wire. He would affix a very thin wire into an arrangement on the wall, attach it with small nails, draw a feint line with pencil and figure in the shadows cast by the wire in the design. It made for a very subtle and delicate work of art. The Vogels owned one of those pieces and were very fond of it.
One is constantly struck by the bare-bones simplicity of Tuttle’s ideas. They are like a naked haiku, so to speak, or the ultimate understatement-- a whisper in the dark. He is usually classed as a minimalist, but I think he is an idea man and wittier than most minimalists—and his DNA contains a shot of Dada as well. In the film he said that only one in tem people understands what his art is all about. Much of his work provokes and puzzles a lot of people, as his stuff is a radical challenge to many gallery visitors. To see his things in a gallery can be disorienting and off-putting. You don’t find a series of regular rectangles aligned on the walls.
I was happy to see the Vogels again in the film and Tuttle with them in their New York apartment. And Tuttle is now a westerner, living in a nice studio in New Mexico, near the same small town that Georgia O’Keefe lived for many years. He seems to feeding of f the deep space of the high desert and the lovely light and dark patterns of the area.
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
Tenure can bring out the crazies
2010_2_14 Tenure can bring on the crazies
In read in the New York Times this morning about Professor Amy Bishop of the University of Alabama in Huntsville going around the bend after not getting tenure at the school. I am sure many instructors have fantasized about doing what she did, Billy Liar-like, while up for tenure, but she took it all the way by pulling a gun during a Departmental meeting, killing three of her colleagues and sending three others to the hospital in serious condition. In the process of checking her background the police found out she had shot to death her 18 year old brother 24 years ago, and she was let go because it was called an accident when it may not have been. And. strangely, when they asked for the file on that case they were told it had disappeared.
By all accounts Amy Bishop was Harvard-trained and brilliant but left a lot to be desired as an instructor. She never made eye contact with students and taught by reading the text book to the class. There had been many complaints about her teaching. On the other hand she was innovative in the lab and had come up with a method that was said to soon replace the use of petri dish in research. She and her husband, also a member in the Biology Dept at Huntsville, had started a business to market her invention. It seemed she had plenty of reason to live, and in addition to her husband, she had three kids at home. Yet she cancelled all that in a moment of ultimate pique, throwing all caution to the wind, and could now face the death penalty in Alabama. One wonders what kind of mind would make such a crazy decision. But apparently, what goes around comes around. Her madness had a history.
The year I left academe I was up for tenure at UNLV. Before there was any formal start to the process two Deans I had been playing basketball with on Sunday mornings for 5 years took me to a bar in Las Vegas called THE JUNGLE CLUB to give me “the bad news.” It was so dark inside the place it took me several minutes to adjust my vision. There was something Darwinian about being told I would never get tenure at the school in THE JUNGLE CLUB. What was I, a performing ape that didn’t make the cut? I knew what the reason would be: my political activism on campus and in town. The administration was especially displeased with the fact I had brought the teacher’s union to campus. However, none of this made any real difference to me as I had long ago decided to drop out of teaching. The decision was, as they say, academic. Also, my wife was already in negotiations to teach in Tucson at the University of Arizona. But after being given the official word by the two Deans, who were friends of mine, I at least had the satisfaction of quitting before they had a chance to deny me tenure. Life is made up of these small triumphs over anger and adversity.
In read in the New York Times this morning about Professor Amy Bishop of the University of Alabama in Huntsville going around the bend after not getting tenure at the school. I am sure many instructors have fantasized about doing what she did, Billy Liar-like, while up for tenure, but she took it all the way by pulling a gun during a Departmental meeting, killing three of her colleagues and sending three others to the hospital in serious condition. In the process of checking her background the police found out she had shot to death her 18 year old brother 24 years ago, and she was let go because it was called an accident when it may not have been. And. strangely, when they asked for the file on that case they were told it had disappeared.
By all accounts Amy Bishop was Harvard-trained and brilliant but left a lot to be desired as an instructor. She never made eye contact with students and taught by reading the text book to the class. There had been many complaints about her teaching. On the other hand she was innovative in the lab and had come up with a method that was said to soon replace the use of petri dish in research. She and her husband, also a member in the Biology Dept at Huntsville, had started a business to market her invention. It seemed she had plenty of reason to live, and in addition to her husband, she had three kids at home. Yet she cancelled all that in a moment of ultimate pique, throwing all caution to the wind, and could now face the death penalty in Alabama. One wonders what kind of mind would make such a crazy decision. But apparently, what goes around comes around. Her madness had a history.
The year I left academe I was up for tenure at UNLV. Before there was any formal start to the process two Deans I had been playing basketball with on Sunday mornings for 5 years took me to a bar in Las Vegas called THE JUNGLE CLUB to give me “the bad news.” It was so dark inside the place it took me several minutes to adjust my vision. There was something Darwinian about being told I would never get tenure at the school in THE JUNGLE CLUB. What was I, a performing ape that didn’t make the cut? I knew what the reason would be: my political activism on campus and in town. The administration was especially displeased with the fact I had brought the teacher’s union to campus. However, none of this made any real difference to me as I had long ago decided to drop out of teaching. The decision was, as they say, academic. Also, my wife was already in negotiations to teach in Tucson at the University of Arizona. But after being given the official word by the two Deans, who were friends of mine, I at least had the satisfaction of quitting before they had a chance to deny me tenure. Life is made up of these small triumphs over anger and adversity.
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Moon & others of its ilk.
2010_2_09 Moon
I saw “Moon” a couple of nights ago, a syfy indie directed by Duncan Jones and starring Sam Rockwell, along with the voice of Kevin Spacey who plays a computer named Gerty, a distant cousin of HAL. “Moon” is derivative but not too bad; at least it kept my interest up, thanks to Sam Rockwell’s performance. What was it about? I was asking myself that during the first hour of the film, although I had my suspicions. Rockwell plays Sam, an astronaut manning a space station on the moon all by himself. His tour of duty was for three years and we meet Sam as he has 2 weeks to go before he goes home to Tess, his beautiful blond wife, who at this point he misses terribly. For three years? All by his lonesome? I don’t think so. That would not be wise or possible. He had to be a clone or a droid. Suddenly there were two Sams and I knew I was right.
Several years ago I read the novel THE EXPERIMENT by John Darton; it was a story about a secret colony of clones off the coast of South Carolina that were created by greedy scientists to be available to rich folks who might need an organ transplant, at which time a clone would be sacrificed to obtain the organ. The clones had no innate knowledge of what their fate was going to be. It was essentially a farm of clones whose innards were to be harvested to keep other people alive who could afford such private and clandestine services. I also thought of “Blade Runner” and its idea of the “replicants,” who were slaves invented by some genius at a huge corporation; they were short-lived near-perfect droids used for “off-world projects.” Several had escaped and tried to see if they might live longer. The “blade runner” was a futuristic cop whose job it was to “retire” the replicants, a code word for killing them. The other night I also saw “Surrogates,” the latest Bruce Willis vehicle, which just came out on DVD. It is a variation on the theme of human-like substitute beings of a robotic nature that do the work of the world while the person they represent is home wired to them and speaking and acting through their surrogates. Another mad genius (James Cromwell) had invented them but it turns out to be what he considers a bad idea. Exit surrogates!
Both in “Moon” and “Blade Runner” the Directors made use of fake photographs to fool the clones and replicants that they represented personal memories back on planet Earth. Both droids invest quite of bit of emotion in the pictures, which are like a raft they hold on to. Sam knows he is at some kind of breaking point when he sees a dark haired woman sitting in one of the rooms in the space station. Shortly afterwards he goes out on a Mission to check a machine that chews up moon rocks for some kind of commercial purpose. Exactly what is hard to figure out? Blinded by light and a dirty window he runs into the machine and passes out. When he wakes up Gerty tells him he hurt himself and that he should stay in bed. Gerty, who like HAL controls everything on the base, was obviously in a position to wake up another clone to go get the injured Sam. In fact, from this point on he begins to physically deteriorate. Then his replica steps out and the two start an uncertain relationship, but they both eventually figure out what is going on and who and what they are. They eventually find a hidden room, which in essence is a sleeping morgue full of dozens of drawers of Sam Rockwell clones. A rescue mission is on the way to the moon station, not to take Sam home but to activate another clone and to terminate Sam’s value to the company. The two Sams make a deal, the dying Sam will stay and the newly awakened Sam will take a space pod back to Earth, leaving just as the rescue mission lands on the moon to live out his days outside corporate control.
I saw “Moon” a couple of nights ago, a syfy indie directed by Duncan Jones and starring Sam Rockwell, along with the voice of Kevin Spacey who plays a computer named Gerty, a distant cousin of HAL. “Moon” is derivative but not too bad; at least it kept my interest up, thanks to Sam Rockwell’s performance. What was it about? I was asking myself that during the first hour of the film, although I had my suspicions. Rockwell plays Sam, an astronaut manning a space station on the moon all by himself. His tour of duty was for three years and we meet Sam as he has 2 weeks to go before he goes home to Tess, his beautiful blond wife, who at this point he misses terribly. For three years? All by his lonesome? I don’t think so. That would not be wise or possible. He had to be a clone or a droid. Suddenly there were two Sams and I knew I was right.
Several years ago I read the novel THE EXPERIMENT by John Darton; it was a story about a secret colony of clones off the coast of South Carolina that were created by greedy scientists to be available to rich folks who might need an organ transplant, at which time a clone would be sacrificed to obtain the organ. The clones had no innate knowledge of what their fate was going to be. It was essentially a farm of clones whose innards were to be harvested to keep other people alive who could afford such private and clandestine services. I also thought of “Blade Runner” and its idea of the “replicants,” who were slaves invented by some genius at a huge corporation; they were short-lived near-perfect droids used for “off-world projects.” Several had escaped and tried to see if they might live longer. The “blade runner” was a futuristic cop whose job it was to “retire” the replicants, a code word for killing them. The other night I also saw “Surrogates,” the latest Bruce Willis vehicle, which just came out on DVD. It is a variation on the theme of human-like substitute beings of a robotic nature that do the work of the world while the person they represent is home wired to them and speaking and acting through their surrogates. Another mad genius (James Cromwell) had invented them but it turns out to be what he considers a bad idea. Exit surrogates!
Both in “Moon” and “Blade Runner” the Directors made use of fake photographs to fool the clones and replicants that they represented personal memories back on planet Earth. Both droids invest quite of bit of emotion in the pictures, which are like a raft they hold on to. Sam knows he is at some kind of breaking point when he sees a dark haired woman sitting in one of the rooms in the space station. Shortly afterwards he goes out on a Mission to check a machine that chews up moon rocks for some kind of commercial purpose. Exactly what is hard to figure out? Blinded by light and a dirty window he runs into the machine and passes out. When he wakes up Gerty tells him he hurt himself and that he should stay in bed. Gerty, who like HAL controls everything on the base, was obviously in a position to wake up another clone to go get the injured Sam. In fact, from this point on he begins to physically deteriorate. Then his replica steps out and the two start an uncertain relationship, but they both eventually figure out what is going on and who and what they are. They eventually find a hidden room, which in essence is a sleeping morgue full of dozens of drawers of Sam Rockwell clones. A rescue mission is on the way to the moon station, not to take Sam home but to activate another clone and to terminate Sam’s value to the company. The two Sams make a deal, the dying Sam will stay and the newly awakened Sam will take a space pod back to Earth, leaving just as the rescue mission lands on the moon to live out his days outside corporate control.
Sunday, February 7, 2010
Noah's Compass
2010_2_5 NOAH’S COMPASS
I am a long time fan of the novels of Anne Tyler. I have read them all through PATCHWORK PLANET, but for various reasons I didn’t read the next three. When I went to my local Barnes and Noble the other day I saw number 18 had just been published, NOAH’S COMPASS, so I bought it and read it in two days. I liked being back in contact with the peculiar ambience around her ambivalent characters. I have promised myself to catch up on the three I missed as they came out.
The central character is a sad-sack poor-man’s philosopher named Liam Pennywell. Although his college degree is in Philosophy, he is at 60 year old man teaching 5th Grade at a run-down private school in Baltimore. The Baltimore area is Tyler country in almost all her novels and she has lived there herself for many years. Things haven’t quite turned out like Pennywell had hoped when he was younger; indeed, he had just been downsized by the school. Because of the recession the school was forced to consolidate the two 5th grade classes into one and, despite the fact Liam had been there longer than the other teacher, they kept the other guy and let Liam go. It didn’t seem right but he was not one to kick up a fuss. Things happen; life was like that. Actually, he felt early retirement wasn’t such a bad idea; it had a certain allure for him. He was so frugal and lived very simply that he had some savings, but the first thing he felt he had to do was move to a cheaper apartment. The book opens with him and two friends making that move. However, it was just his bad luck to be assaulted by an intruder his first night in the apartment. He had gone to bed and woke up in a hospital with a bump on his head and a gash on his hand where the burglar had bit his hand in the struggle that ensued.
The injuries didn’t bother Liam half as much as the fact he had no memory of the obvious struggle he had put up. The intruder took nothing except an experience that he may never consciously recapture. He was inordinately upset over the loss of that ‘dead zone’ in his memory. He didn’t care if was traumatic he felt rob of that experience. There was a hole in his life and he didn’t like it one bit. A doctor he consults makes light of the loss memory. He tells him to forget it; it’s no big deal, or at least it shouldn’t be. Other people tell him the same thing. But Liam, not able to let it go, happens to meets a sympathetic soul, a woman named Eunice who has an unusual job. She is employed by an elderly rich man with a memory problem; he has hired her as his “rememberer,” someone to keep tracked of what he does on any given day and what he needed to do the next day. She seemed to tune right into Liam unhappiness and dilemma over the lost experience. They seem to hit it off right away. When one of Liam’s daughters meets Eunice she tells her dad “that woman has a crush on you.” And the next thing you know, they have become a couple. They have a lot of affection for each other but not yet sleeping together because one his daughters has moved in with him because she can’t get along with her mother, Liam’s ex-wife; plus Eunice lived at home with a father recovering from a serious stroke. (Going to a motel never seemed to occur to them.) In addition, his other two daughters and his ex-wife come by frequently without warning or calling first. In fact, Barbara, his ex-wife came in once just as Eunice was unbuckling Liam’s belt, as she wanted sex then and there. But Liam has the bad habit of never locking his doors and his family members have the impoliteness of always barging in without knocking first. He also has to do a lot of schlepping of family members and a boy friend of Kitty’s, the daughter who lives with him. But he loves Eunice despite her plainness, chubbiness, and numerous quirks and total lack of getting on in the world. She can’t cook worth a lick and is socially inept. She is a funny bunny of a female, very ordinary but with a vein of eccentricity, which appeals to Liam, who is also normal but odd at the same time. He is no particular bargain either, as he is a slovenly dresser and not particularly handsome, and hasn’t been seen naked by a woman for a very long time, which makes him plenty nervous. They are Tyler people; I’d recognize then anywhere. And Eunice is only 38, quite a bit younger than Liam. Still, they love each other and both want things to work out.
But then a fateful coincidence occurs, of all places, in line at the supermarket. He runs into Eunice’s mother who he had never met before, and she informs him in passing that Eunice is married. One can imagine the shock. When Liam confronts her she cries and cries and profusely apologizes. Liam is uncertain what to do, as he is attached to her, but on the other hand he knows he doesn’t want to destroy a marriage because that’s what his father did to his family and his mother never recovered. The two of them go back and forth for a while. His father’s argument for divorcing his mother to go off with a “femme fatale” was “you have to grab happiness when you can.” But Liam is incapable of feeling that way even though it likely means a lonely old age for him. On the other hand, he would have his beloved philosophers to sustain him. Shortly after he meets Eunice’s husband, who impresses him as an all right guy, he makes his final decision: he’s going to break it off with her, and he does. The book ends with him working as an aide in a preschool and going home to his apartment where Kitty is still living with him. The last we hear of him he is sitting at home reading Plato. What I’ll remember is what he says about himself halfway through the book. “I just don’t seem to have the hang of things, somehow. It’s as if I’ve never been entirely present in my own life.” Amen!
Why, a reader might ask, is the novel titled NOAH’S COMPASS when there is no character by that name in the novel? It’s a fair question. Well, there is a short section midway through the book when Liam baby sits his grandson, Jonah, whose mother is an overzealous Christian, where he explains to the lad, who is four years old, the story of Noah’s ark. It bothers the boy that Noah left so many animals behind to drown. When he asks Liam where did the ark stop for gas, he explains it had no motor or, for that matter, no sails because it had nowhere to go; the only aim of the ark was to float while the rest of the world drowned. It just bobbed up and down without a compass, rudder, or sextant. He tells Jonah, “Noah didn’t need to figure out directions, because the whole world was underwater and so it made no difference.” So the image of Noah’s Compass and the fact it is useless when everything “was under water,” becomes a metaphor for Liam who is a nowhere man bobbing up and down on a flood he doesn’t understand very well, despite his reading of Plato.
Finally, once he connects with Eunice, and even after they break up, he forgets all about that lost experience he longed for at the beginning of the story. Larger issues have drowned it out.
I am a long time fan of the novels of Anne Tyler. I have read them all through PATCHWORK PLANET, but for various reasons I didn’t read the next three. When I went to my local Barnes and Noble the other day I saw number 18 had just been published, NOAH’S COMPASS, so I bought it and read it in two days. I liked being back in contact with the peculiar ambience around her ambivalent characters. I have promised myself to catch up on the three I missed as they came out.
The central character is a sad-sack poor-man’s philosopher named Liam Pennywell. Although his college degree is in Philosophy, he is at 60 year old man teaching 5th Grade at a run-down private school in Baltimore. The Baltimore area is Tyler country in almost all her novels and she has lived there herself for many years. Things haven’t quite turned out like Pennywell had hoped when he was younger; indeed, he had just been downsized by the school. Because of the recession the school was forced to consolidate the two 5th grade classes into one and, despite the fact Liam had been there longer than the other teacher, they kept the other guy and let Liam go. It didn’t seem right but he was not one to kick up a fuss. Things happen; life was like that. Actually, he felt early retirement wasn’t such a bad idea; it had a certain allure for him. He was so frugal and lived very simply that he had some savings, but the first thing he felt he had to do was move to a cheaper apartment. The book opens with him and two friends making that move. However, it was just his bad luck to be assaulted by an intruder his first night in the apartment. He had gone to bed and woke up in a hospital with a bump on his head and a gash on his hand where the burglar had bit his hand in the struggle that ensued.
The injuries didn’t bother Liam half as much as the fact he had no memory of the obvious struggle he had put up. The intruder took nothing except an experience that he may never consciously recapture. He was inordinately upset over the loss of that ‘dead zone’ in his memory. He didn’t care if was traumatic he felt rob of that experience. There was a hole in his life and he didn’t like it one bit. A doctor he consults makes light of the loss memory. He tells him to forget it; it’s no big deal, or at least it shouldn’t be. Other people tell him the same thing. But Liam, not able to let it go, happens to meets a sympathetic soul, a woman named Eunice who has an unusual job. She is employed by an elderly rich man with a memory problem; he has hired her as his “rememberer,” someone to keep tracked of what he does on any given day and what he needed to do the next day. She seemed to tune right into Liam unhappiness and dilemma over the lost experience. They seem to hit it off right away. When one of Liam’s daughters meets Eunice she tells her dad “that woman has a crush on you.” And the next thing you know, they have become a couple. They have a lot of affection for each other but not yet sleeping together because one his daughters has moved in with him because she can’t get along with her mother, Liam’s ex-wife; plus Eunice lived at home with a father recovering from a serious stroke. (Going to a motel never seemed to occur to them.) In addition, his other two daughters and his ex-wife come by frequently without warning or calling first. In fact, Barbara, his ex-wife came in once just as Eunice was unbuckling Liam’s belt, as she wanted sex then and there. But Liam has the bad habit of never locking his doors and his family members have the impoliteness of always barging in without knocking first. He also has to do a lot of schlepping of family members and a boy friend of Kitty’s, the daughter who lives with him. But he loves Eunice despite her plainness, chubbiness, and numerous quirks and total lack of getting on in the world. She can’t cook worth a lick and is socially inept. She is a funny bunny of a female, very ordinary but with a vein of eccentricity, which appeals to Liam, who is also normal but odd at the same time. He is no particular bargain either, as he is a slovenly dresser and not particularly handsome, and hasn’t been seen naked by a woman for a very long time, which makes him plenty nervous. They are Tyler people; I’d recognize then anywhere. And Eunice is only 38, quite a bit younger than Liam. Still, they love each other and both want things to work out.
But then a fateful coincidence occurs, of all places, in line at the supermarket. He runs into Eunice’s mother who he had never met before, and she informs him in passing that Eunice is married. One can imagine the shock. When Liam confronts her she cries and cries and profusely apologizes. Liam is uncertain what to do, as he is attached to her, but on the other hand he knows he doesn’t want to destroy a marriage because that’s what his father did to his family and his mother never recovered. The two of them go back and forth for a while. His father’s argument for divorcing his mother to go off with a “femme fatale” was “you have to grab happiness when you can.” But Liam is incapable of feeling that way even though it likely means a lonely old age for him. On the other hand, he would have his beloved philosophers to sustain him. Shortly after he meets Eunice’s husband, who impresses him as an all right guy, he makes his final decision: he’s going to break it off with her, and he does. The book ends with him working as an aide in a preschool and going home to his apartment where Kitty is still living with him. The last we hear of him he is sitting at home reading Plato. What I’ll remember is what he says about himself halfway through the book. “I just don’t seem to have the hang of things, somehow. It’s as if I’ve never been entirely present in my own life.” Amen!
Why, a reader might ask, is the novel titled NOAH’S COMPASS when there is no character by that name in the novel? It’s a fair question. Well, there is a short section midway through the book when Liam baby sits his grandson, Jonah, whose mother is an overzealous Christian, where he explains to the lad, who is four years old, the story of Noah’s ark. It bothers the boy that Noah left so many animals behind to drown. When he asks Liam where did the ark stop for gas, he explains it had no motor or, for that matter, no sails because it had nowhere to go; the only aim of the ark was to float while the rest of the world drowned. It just bobbed up and down without a compass, rudder, or sextant. He tells Jonah, “Noah didn’t need to figure out directions, because the whole world was underwater and so it made no difference.” So the image of Noah’s Compass and the fact it is useless when everything “was under water,” becomes a metaphor for Liam who is a nowhere man bobbing up and down on a flood he doesn’t understand very well, despite his reading of Plato.
Finally, once he connects with Eunice, and even after they break up, he forgets all about that lost experience he longed for at the beginning of the story. Larger issues have drowned it out.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
