I Can See Your House From Here - Archives
vol 2 number 37
Many years ago, there was a local band called Tarantella (like the dance, not the spider), friends of mine that played a really unique combination of gothic pop metal, punk, alternative college rock, and insanity. Imagine the Cure and Bauhaus meeting in a David Lynch bar, finding Jeff Buckeley at the open mic night and a catfight by the pool tables. Now try again, because that's not exactly right. At any rate, they released two albums and were working on a third when they moved to North Carolina; one was SILVER, the follow up to their debut FROM GUFF TO BREATH.
I always liked that title. For those not in the religious lore frame of mind, Guff (alternately Guf or Guph) is a Jewish word for body -- in the case of the album title, the body of souls, a repository for all the unborn souls still waiting for a body to be born. For some reason, that idea -- the ridiculously short trip between the Soul Bank and the delivery room -- is really fascinating to me. It seems appropriate to me that an album should be titled after a phase of life, too -- I think all creative forms should be, even if it's just the catalog number.
It occured to me after finishing the shooting part of my film a few weeks back that the process(es) of creating is a parallel to giving birth. The realization came out of a bout of postpartum depression -- it hit me that I had been thinking and planning for the shoot for so long that there was a big void in my life that I havdn't quite been prepared for (fortunately, I'm no Andrea Yates -- I'd hate to have killed my child because it was going to Hell).
It wasn't just the depression, though. It was the conception of the idea, a long long time ago. It was the way the idea grew inside of me. Hell, to carry this to it's logical conclusion, the pain of delivery was great (I really could have used some drugs that weekend).
Art is not a static thing. Art is a dynamic, viable document, a changing, breathing, living form. The one thing that art can't really do is die -- but, staying on the religious metaphor, people don't either, do they? The body may die, but the soul lives on -- or, as Einstein (was it Einstein?) pointed out, you can't destroy energy. The art is still out there, even if it might get forgotten or lost.
I don't know where that came from, but it's true.
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I've been called to jury duty this week. I can't talk about the case yet, because there's a chance I might end up on the jury, and talking about it would place me in contempt of court. I mention it, though, because I might be sequestered for a week or three, and that would make this column a little late.
That's all about that. Except to say that jury duty sucks. I think we should have a jury pool of 13 (12 plus an alternate) for each courtroom. Every person serves one week (plus or minus the extra time in some cases). The pool rotates on some algorithm that no one can guess (to avoid the potential for extortion, etc.). You know the defendant? Tough. The victim was your wife? Too bad. If it's your week to serve, it's your week to serve.
Make the jury a true group of your peers, without all this legal wrangling and attorney game-playing.
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I finally graduated last week, with my second Bachelor's degree (this one in Computer and Information Science). It was a long road -- three years, which seems like a long time, since I was 3/4 of the way there when I started in 1999; of course, for two years of that, I could only take one class a term, what with full-time work and other commitments. So I suppose, all things considered, I made it out in about the amount of time it should have taken.
I think that learning is important. In some sense, it's one of the most important things in my life. It doesn't require school, of course; read a book, watch a great film, observe a master craftsman at work. As long as your mind is taking in new information, I'd say you're doing well.
The whole thing about adults that are embarassed about returning to school is odd to me. I can understand feeling out of place or old -- even at thirty, that happened to me a few times over the past few years. But past that, what is there to be embarassed of? The idea of continuing to educate yourself? The desire to grow in knowledge? The need for information?
Yeah, some people have different priorities. They want to push their bodies to the limit, to reach new technological heights, to write the Great American Novel. But all of that entails learning, really -- you have to master (and therefore learn) new techniques for fitness, push the technological envelope, absorb situations and words about which to write (no, not really -- most of the future Great American Novelists that I know are pretty stupid).
Unless your priority is sitting on your couch night after night, hoping and praying for the return of ALF, you really have no excuse not to be learning something.
Remember, a mind is a terrible thing.
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Spider-Man took in 114 million dollars in it's first three days. Movie records have been shattered, people are excited about comic movies again, and hopefully the comic book shops will reap a little of the overflow excitement. But best of all:
George Lucas, this little middle finger is for you!
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Damn. A terrible thing to waste . That's what I meant to say...
Watch the wonders of ADD at work.