The Green Light

Nobody's Fault But Mine

2011-08-29T13:42:00.000-07:00

(Disclaimer: I personally favor a nationalized, single-payer system of health care. I believe the recent health-care reform was a step in the right direction but nowhere near comprehensive enough.)

There’s more news out today about the climbing costs of health care. As I read more and more about insurance companies short-changing patients, I think more and more, “How can we reform the system?” I have an idea (theoretical only) that so depends on personal responsibility that I cannot believe some junior Republican congressman has not yet conceived of it: make medical insurance fault-based.

Within the United States of America, individual states use two different systems of car insurance: fault and no-fault. 38 states currently use a fault-based system in which a car insurer will pay out compensation according to each party’s degree of fault. Fault-based states allow for tort lawsuits by one driver against another, one driver against the other’s insurer, or by the insurer against its covered driver. In no-fault states a claimant does not have to prove that he did not cause the crash before collecting benefits.

Although less clear cut, the same principle applies in other insurance situations. If you burn down your house, you probably won’t collect compensation from your homeowner’s insurance policy. If a potential life insurance beneficiary murders the policy holder, as happened in the classic film noir Double Indemnity, the murderous spouse or child ain’t getting nothing.

Why not apply this principle to the medical insurance field? If you are at fault in getting sick or hurt, you have to pay out-of-pocket. It doesn’t even have to be black and white. Insurers could adopt the concept of “comparative fault” from tort law—a person’s medical benefits are reduced in proportion to his degree of fault in causing his medical complaint.

Let’s use an example. Three fifty-year-old men of similar weight and ethnicity are all diagnosed with State IV lung cancer. Patient #1 runs three miles every day. He sees his doctor regularly for check-ups. He eats all organic food. Yet for some mysterious reason, he gets lung cancer. Patient #2 started smoking at age 15. He tried several methods of quitting over the years but just couldn’t stop. Finally, with a doctor’s assistance, he managed to stay off cigarettes for the past 10 years. Still, he gets lung cancer. Patient #3 also started smoking at age 15, but he never even tried to quit. He gets lung cancer.

Assume all three have the same insurance coverage. Should there be a difference in the amount of out-of-pocket expenses? If we as Americans believe in personal responsibility and individuality, then yes, there should be a difference. Just as drivers must take responsibility for their individual driving records when paying insurance premiums, shouldn’t individuals take responsibility for their individual choices when insurance payouts are on the line?

I can hear the protests: “But Kristina, people do have to pay higher health insurance premiums if they’re unhealthy!” True, but the reason for their unhealthiness does not come into play. If Republicans really want to fix the fairness of the health-care system, they should look more closely at the reason a given individual is unhealthy.

Take another example: exclusively genetically-based medical conditions. Many medical conditions, most of them quite rare, are unequivocally not the fault of an individual because they are exclusively genetically-based, and yet people with these genetic conditions must still pay higher health insurance premiums or may have difficulty obtaining coverage at all. And all this based on something over which they have no control! This runs completely counter to the mantra of “personal responsibility.” Yes, charge higher premiums to the unapologetic smoker who refuses to even attempt to quit. Make him pay completely out-of-pocket for his lung cancer treatment. The drunk driver who wraps his car around a tree and injures himself should not get the privilege of public dollars. But do NOT make individuals with genetic illnesses pay for something they did not cause!

This idea works theoretically, but it runs into very practical problems. The unrepentant smoker (or irresponsible drunk driver) and the child with a genetic illness occupy opposite ends of the spectrum, and in their cases assigning levels of fault is very easy. For most other health complaints, however, doctors cannot accurately pinpoint whether nature or nurture caused the problem. Both genetic and environmental factors play a role in most medical issues, and determining the relative influence of those factors still vexes medical science. Some individuals will have high blood pressure no matter how much exercise they get and how many Omega-3s they ingest. Some obese individuals attempt valiantly to lose weight but just can’t keep it off. And the source of some individuals’ issues runs all the way back to childhood eating habits learned at the parental table. Should we blame adults for the mistakes their parents made during their youths?

So yes, apportioning blame is a hard task, especially in the field of human medicine. We do not yet know enough about the delicate balance of genetic and environmental factors. And yet lay juries apportion blame every day in car accident cases and medical malpractice cases. The jury members, who couldn’t think up an excuse to avoid jury duty and are likely dumb as rocks (or old as rocks), must decide whether a doctor’s actions fell below the professional standard of care and must determine whether Driver A ran a light or Driver B was distracted. The modern trend in these tortious settings is toward the system of “comparative fault.” Yes, the doctor may have failed to stitch the wound correctly, but the patient disobeyed direct instructions not to run around. Damages are adjusted accordingly.

A fault-based medical insurance system could also accommodate a role for effort. An individual would get points for trying to quit smoking, for losing even 10 pounds, for bringing blood pressure down, and for regular preventative care. The smoker who attempts to quit but fails would pay less than the smoker who never even attempts. This creates incentives for individuals to take personal responsibility for themselves.

And of course, a fault-based system would have an exception for a natural part of life still bizarrely classified as a medical “condition:” pregnancy. Pregnancies, at least if you believe in science and do not read the Bible literally, tend to come about because of very specific human action.

Then there’s the big question of healthcare for senior citizens. Is aging your own fault? Admittedly, a fault-based system of health insurance would not solve the problem of ballooning costs for medical coverage for the elderly. We must continue to look elsewhere for a route out of that labyrinthine mess.

Republicans currently want to deny medical care for anyone who gets sick regardless of the causes of illness. Democrats currently want to give medical care to everyone regardless of the cause of complaints. True compromise on this subject requires an inquiry into the reasons people require medical care. Republicans chant their mantra of “personal responsibility” all day, but in this area they fail to see a golden opportunity to actually apply their theoretical position to a real-world problem.

2011-08-23T11:13:00.000-07:00

http://www.glamour.com/sex-love-life/blogs/smitten/2011/08/5-dating-dealbreakers-to-recon.html

"A person would have to be pretty extraordinary in other ways to make up for low income, never paying, poor finances (lots of debt), roommates, and marriage hesitancy. However, it isn't beyond comprehension."

"Sorry but settling is settling. If these things weren't dealbreakers to you to begin with then fine, but I sure wouldn't settle for an unemployed guy who didn't want to get married. There are still people who are doing well, even in this economy. No you can't set your standards TOO high, but I think it's reasonable to expect a certain level of financial stability."

"I disagree, totally with #2...a bad economy should not be an excuse for guys to stop being gentlemen, strive for chivalry, ladies! I believe that if he REALLY, REALLY likes you, he'll WANT to take care of the check..."

A recent post on the Glamour magazine website (see the link above) listed five dating “dealbreakers” to reconsider in this economy. The actual list is not very surprising, and I personally agree with the thrust of the article. In such dire economic circumstances and with the entire globe suffering financially, men and women playing the dating game should stop putting so much emphasis on status and wealth.

The comments, however, really surprised me. (I pasted the ones that annoyed me the most). Perhaps only women employed and bringing home big fat paychecks commented on this post. Perhaps the ones happily dating underemployed men were too embarrassed to comment. Or perhaps the women who read Glamour tend to be superficial gold-diggers. Regardless of the explanation, the lack of compassion and understanding and the unwillingness to look beyond a person’s name, job title, and account balance really distress me.

I thought that in the 21st century women had graduated to caring more about the portfolio of a man’s character than his stock portfolio. While for most of human civilization the institution of marriage has carried explicit economic overtones, the three hundred years since the Romantic movement of the 18th and 19th centuries have spread the idea of marriage based on romantic love: you marry the person you love, not the pocketbook your family wants. Some cultures still arrange marriages out of economic, rather than emotional, compatibility, but in 21st century mainstream America, if women do not wanted to be treated as simply walking vaginas, then it follows that those same women should not treat men as simply walking wallets. An individual is not just a job, a place to sleep, and a dinner to pay for. Every individual, regardless of career path, has dreams, desires, flaws, faults, hobbies, interests, and passions. I sincerely hope that the women of the United States can see that.

Perhaps the lukewarm reaction to this list has something to do the Carrie Bradshaw-fueled regression back into 18th century mores. Carrie Bradshaw, heroine and icon of the 90s and 00s, was disgustingly materialistic, as financially unstable as 1920s Germany, and yet, strangely, prone to dating very rich men. She ended up with the gazillion-aire Mr. Big, whose economic capacity greatly exceeded his emotional capacity. The Sex and the City viewer always knew about the content of Mr. Big’s bank account: he was the next Donald Trump, wore fantastic suits, stayed at lavish hotels, bought vineyards in Napa, and could fly off to Paris at a moment’s notice. The viewer never saw too many positive figures in the account book of Mr. Big’s character, however: he lied, cheated, neglected Carrie, and couldn’t commit emotionally. He did like jazz and did have a great record collection, but he went to the opera only to please his wife. We do see him read the newspaper, but we never hear him offer his opinion on literature or art.

Even more than the possible over-appreciation of a questionable cultural touchstone, what troubles me about the comments in response to the Glamour posting is a lingering problem with feminism and the modern role of womanhood. Women in the 20th century worked extremely hard to get men to see a woman as an individual—as a whole being with a mind and a body—instead of just a replaceable cog in an economic and reproductive system. Now, it seems that some women in the 21st century will not do the same for men.

Even the Losers Get Lucky Sometimes

2011-08-22T09:44:00.000-07:00

Season 4 of Breaking Bad has been wildly uneven and in many respects has veered off course from the storytelling that made the first three seasons so wildly compelling, but last night’s episode got back on track and in fact epitomized what I believe is one of the main points of the show as a whole.

“Maybe I’m not such a loser after all.” –Jesse Pinkman

Jesse says this to Walter White during a heated argument about the recent efforts of Gus and Mike to boost Jesse’s fragile self-esteem. If you asked me to sum up the theme of Breaking Bad in one sentence, I would choose that line of dialogue. Most of the main characters in this show—Walter, Skylar, Jesse, even Hank—are all trying to prove, both to themselves and to the world, that they are not losers.

Walter did not say it as explicitly as Jesse did, but his words and actions in last night’s episode clearly showed that he will not go back to playing the “loser.” As his wife Skylar proposes going to the police—which suggests Walt’s weakness and ineffectualness—Walter snaps back, “I am the danger...I am the one who knocks.” Walt emotionally, mentally, and even physically cannot listen to his wife berate his abilities and belittle his importance. He will not be a loser. And he will make his wife understand this.

Later in the episode, Walt takes possession of the car wash from his former boss, the sniveling, greasy, undermining Bogdan. When Walt worked as a cashier for Bogdan, he had reached his low point of Loserville. Now he comes back to the car wash not as a Loser, but as a powerful, capable Boss. Watching the scene, I expected Walt to explode at Bogdan and show off his new take charge personality. Instead, the clever writers of Breaking Bad gave Walt something much more subtle, yet much more powerful, to do. Walt takes a framed dollar off the wall—the proverbial “first dollar I ever earned” that immigrant Bogdan has saved all these years—and uses it to buy a Coke. It’s a brilliant way of saying that Walter believes in himself, in his abilities, in his own power. He no longer even cares enough about Bogdan to shout and scream and swear. He has risen so far above Loser status that all Bogdan is worth to him anymore is a can of Coca-Cola.

From the very beginning of the show—from when we saw Walter White as the ultimate Nobody—Breaking Bad has always been about asserting one’s identity. Instead of taking charity from a rich former partner, Walter asserted his skills and knowledge to cook meth. He graduated to asserting himself physically, violently killing a number of people throughout the series. He asserts himself with his wife daily, refusing to give in to her passive-aggressive behavior. On last week’s episode, when he told Hank that Gale Boetticher was not the real meth mastermind, Walt subtly asserted himself as the real genius.

Perhaps this explains why Breaking Bad has struck such a chord with its small but devoted audience. In the midst of economic crisis and governmental stalemate, perhaps viewers applaud Walt’s continuing refusal to take shit from anyone. Walt has transformed from a classic Loser—“ineffectual” is the word that keeps coming to my mind to describe him—into a Boss. Along the way, so has Jesse, and even at times, so has Skylar. Walt has finally started participating in his own life and taking responsibility for his actions. He has finally asserted himself! True, he has done so by cooking meth, but the methods of assertion are less important than the assertion itself.

To me, this show is not ultimately about the temptation of crime, the thrill of illegal activities, or even about “providing for one’s family,” as Gus says. It is about normal people standing up and saying, “I won’t take shit from anyone. I’m not a loser.”

And with that message, the writers and creators of Breaking Bad have created the ultimate television show for the Great Recession. They have tapped into a deep need of individuals to assert themselves. Maybe we cannot all start cooking meth, but, like Walt and Jesse, we can all find some way of proving, at least to ourselves, that we are not losers.

Statement of Purpose

2011-08-20T10:23:00.000-07:00

Upon telling my mother that I am starting up my blog again, she said, "Just don't write so much about yourself." To appease her and others like her who ask every writer, commentator, politician, artist, actor, etc. to justify their existence and activity, I offer an explanation of why I want to write a blog and why I feel justified in doing so.

If you are reading this, you might be wondering, “Why should she get to have a blog? What does she know and why should I care about it?” If I were an outsider reading this blog I would wonder those very same things; unlike many commentators on Fox News, I consider a questioning of what qualifies me to pass judgment on the world a valid inquiry. I present two different theories.

In this instance, like so many others in my life, Pete Townshend of the Who can better speak for me than I can speak for myself. In a song called “Guitar and Pen”—a song arguably beneath Pete’s extraordinary talents as a songwriter that appears on the wildly uneven, swan-song album Who Are You—Pete addresses a hypothetical teenage audience member, who of course stands in for Pete himself: “You’re alone above the street somewhere/ Wondering how you’ll ever count out there.” Never mind that big-nosed Pete had already achieved phenomenal success as a rock star and more than proved that he “counted;” by 1978, the year this song came out, booze had completely torpedoed Pete’s never-steady self-confidence.

As usual Pete hits the nail right on the head, the nail being the fragile psyche of Kristina Caffrey. I wonder every day how I’ll ever “count” in a huge, overpopulated, deeply confused world. Perhaps certain members of this audience also wonder how they will “count.” Perhaps none of you share my existential paranoia. Perhaps none of you have such inflated egos that you feel that you should count. Maybe some people do not even want to count. The subject of “counting” deserves an entire blog post devoted exclusively to the topic, so I will stop here and simply reiterate that I do wonder how I will count out there.

But never fear, Pete said to both himself and the legions of followers showering him with messianic praise. “You can walk, you can talk, you can fight/ But inside you've got something to write/ In your hand you hold your only friend/ Never spend your guitar or your pen.”

We could use up an entire blog post debating whether or not one can use fighting to create meaning in one’s life and one’s world in 2011. Individuals, at least the last time I checked, can still walk and talk without too many legal obstacles. Pete advises, however, that walking, talking, and fighting do not have the same “counting capacity” as writing does. And yes, I totally made up that term: “counting capacity,” meaning the capacity of an activity to help the actor “count” within a given setting.

Thank you, Pete, for giving me support for the contention that I do have something to write. I always knew that I had this something, but it took me many years to figure out what that something was. Of course, I will not just simply claim that I have something to write. I will attempt to prove on this blog that I have quite significant and meaningful things to write. I believe that a writer is nothing without an audience, so it will be in part up to you, my hopefully faithful readers, to decide if I should, counter to Pete’s advice, spend my guitar and pen.

So, in a nutshell, that is why I am writing this blog.

On the other hand, we can subscribe to the Walt Whitman theory of writing, which basically states that if you are a sentient creature, you have an unalienable right to write, to sing, to speak, to make others listen to you, and to simply be. The only qualification needed to pass judgment on the world and oneself is mere consciousness. In the 20th section of his magnum opus “Song of Myself,” Walt wrote, “I do not trouble my spirit to vindicate itself or be understood. I exist as I am, that is enough.”

If I take the same approach to writing as Walt took to being, then in fact I do not have to trouble my writing to vindicate itself. I write as I do, and that is enough.

If it’s enough for Walt, it’s enough for me. That is additionally why I am writing this blog.

A Mammoth Missed Opportunity

2011-08-20T09:49:00.000-07:00

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44200347/ns/technology_and_science-science/t/reindeer-herder-finds-remains-baby-mammoth-russias-arctic/

For today's entry in the annals of Missed-Opportunities-to-Make-a-Climate-Change-Connection, I point you to a recent discovery of another perfectly-preserved wooly mammoth body frozen in the Siberian tundra. Another similarly preserved mammoth specimen was unearthed in 2007 in the same region of Russia. The story above says that a reindeer herder found the baby mammoth "poking out of the permafrost." In this description the article misses a giant opportunity to make a climate change connection.
I applaud the discovery of a well-preserved specimen of an ancient species. Paleontologists can study this new find and glean important details about Ice Age animals and their eventual extinction. However, I cannot applaud the conditions that made this discovery possible. The article fails to even hint that climate change led to this discovery. You might ask, "How? That's rather a large leap to make!"
Climate change led to the discovery of this 40,000 year old mammoth by melting vast swaths of Siberian and Arctic permafrost. As the permafrost melts, things long frozen and buried beneath the ice become uncovered. That little mammoth had spent 40,000 years frozen in the tundra, and in that time no human or animal disturbed it. No seismic activity uncovered it. No wandering nomad found it. But now, as reports come in (see below) of Russia's rapidly melting permafrost, this little mammoth was found. I do not think it is a coincidence.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/oct/20/arctic-tundra

http://climatechangearticles.blogspot.com/2011/08/russias-permafrost-melting-will-add-to.html

As the Russian tundra melts, expect to see more mammoths. But while it would be incredibly awesome to actually recreate mammoths, we must remember that the only reason we have these specimens and their DNA is climate change.

The Press Has a Climate Change Blind Spot

2011-08-18T13:21:00.000-07:00

http://www.examiner.com/homeland-security-in-chicago/the-year-s-disasters-prompt-initiative-for-a-weather-ready-nation

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/nationnow/2011/08/2011-the-year-of-the-billion-dollar-weather-disasters.html

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/environment/2011-08-17-record-weather-disasters_n.htm

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/capital-weather-gang/post/with-extreme-weather-off-the-charts-national-weather-service-launches-weather-ready-initiative/2011/08/17/gIQA2xjULJ_blog.html

The journalists and reporters of the United States of America have a giant collective blind spot. This spot enables them to report on extreme weather and the extreme costs of that weather without asking the kind of hard-hitting, probing questions we expect of even our most incompetent members of the press these days: “Why is this happening?” “What can be done about it?”
I have linked four articles for your viewing pleasure that report on the economic impacts of 2011’s extreme weather. These articles come from reputable publications—OK, OK, USA Today may not be a paragon of journalistic exactitude, but it is at least somewhat reputable. Neither the national paper nor news outlets in the major cities of Los Angeles and Chicago even mentioned the words “climate change” in their coverage of the costs of extreme weather. And the Washington Post, the newspaper of Bernstein and Woodward, merely says that “some people” point to climate change as a cause. Yes, I know this article appeared on the Post’s online blog, and yes, at least the writer linked to a responsible authority on climate change.
If “Samenow” is truly the surname of the Washington Post writer, it could not more accurately describe his journalistic attitude: stick to the status quo, don’t ask hard questions, don’t follow up, and god forbid, don’t try to actually contact a scientist directly to get an opinion! And stick straight to the Republican Party line that only “some people” believe in climate change. Keep your dismissive and sarcastic tone that suggests that climate scientists are just a bunch of eccentric eggheads. Don’t dare try to actually bring some much needed illumination to an issue of incredible public importance! Don’t try to live up to the investigative legacy of your previously ground-breaking and muck-raking publication.
I could also link many, many pieces reporting on the extreme droughts in Texas that will not go near the term “climate change” with a 10-foot cattle prod.
My big question is, “Why does the press have a blind spot when it comes to climate change?” Some journalists might offer the excuse, “I just report the news. I don’t comment on it.” I understand this perspective and understand that a responsible and ethical reporter cannot offer his or her own opinion on whether climate change is to blame for this or that disaster. However, I cannot understand that a responsible and ethical journalist would not follow up in some manner: ask questions, do original research, ask a climate scientist. Heck, even just mention it as a possibility!
The press’ climate change blind spot tends to disprove the hysterical accusations coming from the Right that the news media has a “liberal bias.” I certainly do not see the liberal bias in my review of weather-related news. And if anybody does detect such a bias in a major media outlet—we’re talking national or first-tier city newspapers and magazines—please let me know so I can post the article here and congratulate the brave and fearless reporter.
Until then, I will continue to point out the lack of discussion of climate change in weather-related reporting.

2011-08-18T12:31:00.000-07:00

No Concert for Young Men

2009-06-01T15:19:00.000-07:00

A few days ago I attended a New Mexico Symphony Orchestra concert at the Rio Grande Zoo and saw a reassuring sight: more than ten people under the age of 60. See, I have a fear for the future of classical music. Go to any classical music concert and take a sociological profile of the crowd, and you will find that the vast majority of attendants could qualify for AARP and the senior discount. This phenomenon greatly interests me. It leads to several questions: Do young people simply not like classical music? Do senior citizens, once they reach the age of 60, just naturally gravitate towards classical music? Will the people of my generation ever embrace classical music?
I have grown up with classical music in my life, but I wonder if the senior citizens filling the seats at symphony concerts today grew up with classical music. Did this entire generation grow up with an appreciation for this style of music? Have they been attending classical music concerts for the past forty years, growing and changing with the musicians they watch? I really don’t have an answer to that. I have no idea if previous generations had any exposure to Beethoven before they turned 55. I do know that the vast majority of my generation has absolutely no idea about classical music. So perhaps one answer to my demographic question is that older generations simply “grew up” with classical music appreciation.
But given the incredible dominance of popular music from 50s onward, I do not think that this is the real answer. I do not think that the baby boomer sitting next to me at the symphony concert listened to Mozart in 1962. The first time he heard a string quartet was probably through the Beatles’ “Yesterday.” While previous generations probably did have more musical appreciation than the uncultured heathen hordes of my generation, I don’t think they were rushing to hear Haydn at Carnegie Hall.
Music and music performances have a surprising amount of socioeconomic connotations. Classical music somehow has become the music of the socioeconomic elite; tickets to the Met Opera in New York are as much a status symbol as a Jaguar in the garage and the newest Gucci purse on your arm. I have a feeling that many of the attendees don’t really like opera. They just need and want to be seen. Even in a much smaller and much less affluent place like Albuquerque, the situation is the same. Going to a symphony performance is one of only a handful events in Albuquerque for which people might change out of jeans into something slightly dressier. I don’t know why classical music has become the music of the elite—it would take an entire sociological study to attempt an answer to that question.
We traditionally associate socioeconomic status with older people—men and women who have worked hard all their adult lives to carve out a place in the world. Do they just now have the money to attend classical music concerts? Or do they just now have the patience to attend classical music concerts? Socioeconomic status concerns could definitely play a part in why most classical music attendees are “of a certain age.”
But for me, as a young person who enjoys classical music, the reason has to do with something in the performance itself—performance practices that tend to alienate the audience and create an unwelcoming atmosphere that turns young people away. Your average classical music performance is actually a deadly dull affair. Somber adults, many with graying hair of their own, come out in funereal dress, and with not one friendly word of introduction, launch into their music. No “Hello Cleveland!” from the conductor. Not even a “How’re you all doing tonight?” If an uneducated, uncultured cretin happens to clap between movements, he is greeted by glares from surrounding seatmates, even though he is actually expressing his enthusiasm for the music. Other people must sit with their hands clasped, deathly afraid of clapping in the wrong place. The musicians sit far, far away from you, elevated on a stage, while you sit far below them. You cannot really identify with them. No matter how warm or joyous the music, the presentation of it cannot help but alienate the audience.
Contrast this to the performance style of the Church of Beethoven (see link at right), a classical music performance series which has achieved great success with people of all ages and all walks of life. Informality creates a welcoming environment. The audience surrounds a performance space—the musicians are not elevated, but instead become physically part of the audience, allowing much greater identification. The musicians enter in semi-formal, semi-casual clothes and actually talk and interact with the audience. No one glares at you if you get up for more espresso.
Despite my love for playing classical music on the cello, I often get bored at classical music concerts. There’s no interaction between me and the musicians. In contrast, I have attended some outstanding rock concerts at which I could feel the interaction between the band and the crowd. The bands somehow responded to the energy of the crowd; I wish that classical musicians could open themselves up more to the energy of their audience.
Perhaps 60 and 70 year olds have reached a point in their lives when they do not need constant interaction—when they can sit passively and listen. I think that young people, even 30 and 40 year olds, still need a sense of informal interaction. Young people today want to banter with the performers they come to see. They want a give-and-take with the musicians. They want to clap whenever they feel the urge. They want the powerful feeling of the music to match the outward expression of that music. I myself cannot just sit passively. I want to get involved in the music. I can see why people like Leonard Bernstein and Yo-Yo Ma became so popular—not necessarily because they possessed greater skill, but because their effervescent enthusiasm made audiences feel involved and included and an actual part of the music.
I fear that if the classical music community continues to perform as it does today, it risks turning away people who may actually enjoy the music. We cannot let alienating performance practices get in the way of connecting music and people. I truly believe that most people, even the dunderheads of my generation, can enjoy classical music. They just have to hear it in the right way. I fear that unless we change our way of playing classical music, when my generation reaches retirement age, the audiences will have disappeared.

Carry That Weight

2009-05-25T14:56:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago I had the pleasure to introduce an individual whom I care about to something for which I have great passion: the Beatles. I find it one of the greatest pleasures in life to share with a companion something for which you have a great passion, and a further pleasure to find that the person appreciates your passion. This is really not going to be a post about the Beatles, so I will refrain from describing the circumstances. Suffice to say that my companion made a very insightful (for a beginning Beatle fan) observation: the Beatles’ songs are so short. The short duration of most Beatles songs (the perfection of “Yesterday” lasts a mere 127 seconds) has long flabbergasted me, but it has also made me think about duration and length in general. Which is better—long or short songs/movies/books/papers? What matters more—quality or quantity? What does quantity have to do with quality? I’ve decided that all that matters is that you carry that weight.
I have recently escaped my first year of law school and fascist length requirements. “Be concise,” they kept telling me. “But also be complete.” These two instructions seemed at odds to me—how can I be entirely complete if I have to cut down my content to fit within your totalitarian, Stalin-esque word requirements? I managed usually to come in at about 10 words under par, which I considered a great personal accomplishment. I began to wonder if my ability to write a great deal and to come up with ever more additional arguments and points was actually a weakness instead of a strength.
My “legal writing” (itself an oxymoron) professors also threw that old standby Shakespeare quotation at me: “Brevity is the soul of wit.” This little morsel of advice is actually highly ironic and widely misused and misquoted. This line from Hamlet is uttered by Polonius, who is, basically, an idiot. Through his scheming and meddling and eavesdropping, he gets himself stabbed to death. He speaks the line about brevity in the midst of a useless six-line introduction before finally getting to the point: Hamlet is mad. In fact, Queen Gertrude retorts to Polonius, “More matter, with less art.” If brevity is the soul of wit, then Polonius certainly has no wit. The statement, like the sharpest slices of irony, draws attention to Polonius’ own ignorance. He does not practice what he preaches. Moreover, Shakespeare includes the line about brevity in his lengthiest play, and I don’t think anyone would accuse the Bard of lacking wit.
The issue of length and duration also fascinates me in the context of art and entertainment. It seems to me that songs and movies are getting longer and longer and longer, in most cases unnecessarily. In the Beatles’ day, your average pop song lasted 2:30. The Beatles themselves broke a major rule when they allowed “Hey Jude” to expand to 7:00. Today, even the most middling, insipid songs regularly stretch past the 3:30 or 4:00 mark, throwing in unnecessary fade-ins and fade-outs and an 87th rendition of a chorus that wasn’t particularly catchy the first 86 times. It used to be that Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant could zip through a romantic comedy in an hour, with two-hour-plus running times reserved for Gone with the Wind and David Lean epics. Nowadays, it seems like every movie feels entitled to two hours of your time, no matter how tired the jokes have gotten or how many unfortunate plot twists have occurred on the way to the ending you saw coming for the last 1 hour and 45 minutes.
But I do not intend to place some kind of value on expedience. I can sit through the almost four hours of Lord of the Rings: Return of the King with no complaint about length. I relish every second of the 8:03 of “Stairway to Heaven.” I can digest the hundreds and hundreds of pages of Harry Potter with no problems.
I think the real relationship between quality/quantity lies in whether the song/movie/book/whatever deserves and earns its quantity. Does the quality justify the quantity? “Yesterday” more than earns its 2:07; it probably deserves quite a bit more time. But “Stairway to Heaven” also earns every bit of that 8:03. “Free Bird” fully deserves to clock in at 10:07, but most of the songs put out today do not deserve their four minutes, or even their three minutes. They do not earn their time. Most of the movies out today do not have quality to justify the quantity of their length (I’m looking at you, The Dark Knight).
It comes down to carrying the weight of duration and length. An unabridged performance of Hamlet will set you back five hours, yet it carries the weight effortlessly, born forward on a seemingly endless supply of creation. “Like a Rolling Stone” has no variation in structure (no bridge, no chorus) yet Dylan keeps giving you something new in the verses throughout the then-unheard-of 6 minutes and 13 seconds.
I refuse to choose quality over quantity; this is an essentially false dichotomy. The relationship between quality and quantity is much more fluid and complex. Quality comes in all shapes and sizes, lengths and widths. Unfortunately, most of today’s art/entertainment seems to come down on the side of quantity trumping quality. I just want something good, and if it leaves me wanting more, as both “Yesterday” and “Stairway to Heaven” do, then I know it must be good.

A Clean, Well-Lighted Place

2009-05-20T17:30:00.000-07:00

“You are an expatriate, see? You hang around cafes.”
Bill Gorton to Jake Barnes in Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises

Last summer, shortly after I returned from England, I got to go back to Europe and got to observe a unique species of Romantic European lifestyle: café culture. By café culture I mean people leisurely sipping wine or espresso at little metal tables spread across the sidewalk in the narrow alleys, the broad avenues, and the wide plazas of France and Spain. Café culture had fascinated me ever since I had read Ernest Hemingway’s impossibly perfect short story “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place.” Then, when I read his full length novel The Sun Also Rises, the idea of a café intrigued me even more. When I set off for France and Spain, I tried to observe and immerse myself in café culture, but I found it quite difficult.
As an American, I had trouble with café culture because the concept is so alien to American mainstream culture. In America, we eat quickly, ask for the check before the meal has even arrived, and hurry on to our next important event. We talk on cell phones instead of to the person sitting across from us. Waitpersons try to rush you out, eager to make another tip as quickly as possible. In America we also seem to have a paranoia of eating or drinking alone. Look around a restaurant and see how many people dine alone. Sure, we all know about those old men alone at the bar, but we look at them with a mixture of embarrassment and pity and wonder why these men have to “drink alone.” We seem to believe that sitting alone in a public place is a sign of weakness and an empty, marginalized life.
The situation is completely different in Europe. In France and Spain I marveled at the number of individual people sitting at their small tables—old, young, men, women, rich, poor. Drinking or dining alone does not suggest that these people are in any way pathetic. Rather, these people have a simple security in themselves. They do not worry about appearing “lonely.” They simply want to have a meal or a drink and have a perfect security and serenity in themselves. Sometimes they read newspapers, but sometimes they just sit, perhaps thinking, or perhaps just observing life. Many of the more well-dressed men and well-heeled women do bring out their palm pilots and place them atop their ever-present package of cigarettes. But while they may check these devices once in a while, they do so discreetly, slowly, and quietly.
Many of these French and Spanish people can make a tiny demitasse cup of espresso or one glass of wine last for an hour. We in America are so accustomed to speed, that, try as I might, I could not make my beverages last as long as the natives did. In Europe they still know how to simply sit, enjoying and savoring each sip and each piece of pleasant conversation. Friends move in and out, people come and go with various degrees of greeting, and still these people can sit with their wine, coffee, and cigarettes, perfectly at ease with the velocity of the world.
We reached the town of Arles, France, where the café immortalized above by Van Gogh still exists. I have to say that it is just as beautiful today, in person, as it appears in the painting. Van Gogh expertly captured something in the way that the light moves and the bumpy cobblestoned street. The tinkle of glasses and china still creates a gentle murmur that mingles with soft plashes from a nearby fountain. I wanted to sit at that café and blend in with the Europeans and have a quiet cup of coffee by myself. I wanted to make an experiment of it—could I really slow down that much? The answer was no. Somehow, I did not yet have the confidence, the essential French attitude.
But last Friday night, not in France, but in Albuquerque New Mexico, I found the French attitude. I decided to go hear my favorite local band play—they play a style of Gypsy jazz that immediately transports you back to 1950s Paris. I sat, all by myself, at a table on the softly lit patio and made two glasses of Gewurztraminer and a small plate of crostinis last for two and a half hours. I had put on a fabulously sexy little black dress which I don’t get the opportunity to wear very often. I sat there in the warm, soft night listening to the fantastically French jazz in my chic outfit. I felt confident, cool, sexy, and entirely European. Within the year since I had visited France, I had somehow found the confidence, security, and serenity to sit alone listening to some romantic music, enjoying and savoring some wine, and feeling neither self-conscious nor hurried. Instead of imagining the passersby ask, “Why is she sitting alone?” I imagined them making the French observation: “What a chic and attractive young woman.”
I think I can sum up the essential difference between the American and European experience of cafes: in America, restaurants/cafes are somewhere to go. In Europe, restaurants/cafes are somewhere to be. I challenge all of you out there to put on a fabulous outfit and go, alone, to your favorite local spot, slow down, have a glass of wine of cup of coffee, and just try to be.

Movie Review: Star Trek

2009-05-20T17:03:00.000-07:00

Before the new franchise re-boot of Star Trek actually began, I sat through several previews of what looked like egregiously awful movies that would be coming out throughout the rest of the summer. These previews sunk my movie-going spirits and confirmed my worst suspicions that mainstream Hollywood simply does not know to how make good movies anymore. Fortunately, once the actual movie began, I decided that at least three people in mainstream Hollywood know how to create 2 hours of good old-fashioned, summer popcorn movie fun: the director/producer and the two screenwriters of Star Trek.
The biggest compliments I can give this movie are that it had everything I wanted out of a summer movie and even left me wanting more. The idea of resuscitating and re-enervating a franchise has achieved great popularity in the last few years: Casino Royale, Batman Begins, Superman Returns, the new Indiana Jones. Franchises such as these depend much more on character than they do plot. In fact, most plots in James Bond movies and superhero movies are essentially the same but with the names changed. Audiences do not keeping paying ever-rising movie prices to see ridiculous and derivative plots; instead, they keep coming back because of the characters. Audiences like to see how these characters grow and evolve, or in the case of James Bond, stay exactly the same.
Star Trek achieves a nearly impossible task: staying true to the characters whom millions of fans have come to love over the decades, while enticing new audiences with those same characters. The movie did have a retro look, helped mostly by the delightfully 60s-style costumes and production design. This is your mother’s Star Trek, but new details here and there, plus fantastic visuals, also make it the younger generation’s Star Trek. We get the same lines that even non-Trekkies know—“Live long and prosper,” “Beam me up Scotty,”—but we also get a new and interesting angle on Spock’s internal struggle, a la Batman or Spiderman, and a plot centering on the actual use of the heavily loaded word “genocide.”
I said that this movie had everything I wanted in a summer movie, and it did: laughs, explosions, hot guys, beautiful women, great one-liners, profound father-son moments, high-speed chases, emotional outbursts, and world-saving. Star Trek keeps a perfectly balanced tone between light-hearted humor, action-adventure adrenaline rushes, and final frontier-style profundity. In this mixture of tones, it most closely resembles the original Star Wars and Indiana Jones movies. Unlike the deadly dreary new Batman movies, this new voyage of the Enterprise managed to produce in me a decidedly non-Vulcan range of emotions—both out-loud laughter and tears. Before this era of oh-so-serious superheroes, our biggest action star was Harrison Ford, who, whether out in space or in the Well of Souls, seemed to deliver all of his heroic lines with a humorous, sexy, swagger. As played by Chris Pine, Captain Kirk most resembles Captain Solo, a bona-fide space cowboy.
This movie made me wonder why all the humor has gone out of action/adventure movies. I don’t want slapstick and I don’t necessarily need belly laughs, but a little levity actually can increase the suspense of an action sequence or enhance the poignancy of a conversational symbolic exchange. Christopher Nolan, the director of the new Batman movies, could learn a thing or two from J.J. Abrams, the director of Star Trek.
Before seeing this movie, I had never seen a single Star Trek episode or movie, and yet this movie made me interested in the whole Star Trek world. I left wanting to know more about Kirk, Spock, McCoy and the rest of the gang. And isn’t this precisely the purpose of a franchise opener—to make you want a second movie? I’m not saying that I have become a Trekkie over night—nothing that drastic has happened. I’m just saying that I can now see why some people do become such dedicated fans of Star Trek. I have a mild curiosity, which I see as a sure sign of movie success.

In My Life

2009-05-15T13:15:00.000-07:00

On this date exactly a year ago, in 2008, I had one of the best days in my life.

May 15
Liverpool milks the Beatles for all they are worth. The hostel at which I stayed, besides being quite clean, spacious, nice, and friendly, was decorated with Beatles photos, paintings, and canvas prints. The different floors were named Penny Lane and Strawberry Fields. I had quite a nice breakfast at the hostel consisting of cornflakes, eggs, bacon, beans, toast, and tea. I then set out for my second day in Liverpool. First I had to go back to the train station to buy my return ticket to London. As I walked out of the Lime Street station, an old, grizzled man with no front teeth said something to me. I didn’t understand, so I said, “sorry?” He said, “I’m a poet. And I said that your smile could make the sun shine all day.” He then took my hand and kissed it. There I was at the Liverpool train station having my hand kissed by an old hobo whose only introduction was, “I’m a poet.” It was utterly fabulous. Incredible. I was smiling hugely the entire time in Liverpool. I also liked that he made reference to the sun, because the Beatles have many lovely lyrics about the sun. I loved that he saw something poetic in me—something that made him stop in his tracks and spout some poetry! Yet another positive encounter with an old man—The Poet.
I then went on a tour run by the National Trust that went inside John and Paul’s childhood homes. This tour was simply amazing. To be in John and Paul’s bedrooms! This really made them come alive for me as real people. To think that they stood in exactly the same space, that they slept in that bed! Sometimes the Beatles seem like fictional characters or untouchable stars. But now they appeared to me as real people, immediate and close. It felt simultaneously real and surreal. Each house had a custodian/caretaker who lives in the house and keeps it safe. They both had fantastic Liverpool accents and talked about meeting Paul. The houses were very, very small and quite modest, because of course John and Paul started off as just local Liverpool lads—biking through the quiet streets, going to church garden parties, mowing the lawn. Going into the houses really made me feel like a I knew them, almost as if they were old uncles of mine.
John and Paul’s houses are quite far from the center of Liverpool, but the van dropped us off back at the Cavern, in the city center. And who should I run into yet again at the Cavern but Neil, complete with cigarette hanging jauntily out of the corner of his mouth. I told him I was planning on going to the Beatles Story, a museum-type thing down by the Albert Dock. I asked him about that interview possibility and he said he’d look into it and come get me at the docks—it was not out of his way at all.
So I went on my way to the Beatles Story. It had different rooms replicating important moments in the Beatles’ story. It had some impressive paraphernalia, screens with interviews of various people, and panels explaining every stage of the Beatles. It included the white piano that John Lennon played in the “Imagine” video. I was in there when, sure enough, Neil came and found me. He led me out to where a reporter was waiting. I don’t remember the reporter’s name. I felt completely incredulous. I could not believe it was actually happening. Me, little Kristina Caffrey, giving an interview to the Liverpool Echo! It was beyond my wildest dreams. Neil had to leave on his next tour, so I bade him a very warm farewell and thanked him for a great time in Liverpool.
The reporter and I went into the Starbuck’s beside the Beatles museum and I had the only cup of coffee I had during my entire stay in England. The reporter was ridiculously cute, but judging by his accent, not a native of Liverpool. I asked where he was from, and he answered somewhere in Yorkshire near Leeds. I asked him if he got a lot of Beatle stories. He said a fair amount, but with all of the horrible stories in the news these days, people would appreciate a good, positive story. He said that when he had come to Liverpool, he had to quickly get up on his Beatles knowledge. He asked me a bunch of questions. By that point in the whole Jeopardy experience, I had become quite comfortable giving interviews. He asked all the right questions—questions whose answers I had rehearsed many times. How did I get into the Beatles? Isn’t it a bit odd for a 21 year old American girl? What do your friends think? What’s your favorite song? Have you seen them in concert? We went outside to await the photographer. The reporter and I sat on a bench discussing Caffrey’s Irish Ale. The photographer arrived and took my picture in front of the Beatles Story. I then went back inside the museum and finished looking around. It had a marvelous gift shop where I splurged on some Beatles items.
I got a train back to London and spent 2 and a half hours listening to the Beatles and squirming with delight over the incredible experience I had just had. I felt deeply happy, but I also had butterflies in my stomach. I had the same giddy feeling that I had on the flight back from Los Angeles after winning Jeopardy. I kept asking myself, “Did that really just happen?” and then realizing that “oh my god that really just happened!” I felt so happy and positive and I felt that, in fact, the world is a good place to live in. With the Beatles in the air and sheep in the fields, the world seemed perfectly okay.
I am so glad that I went to Liverpool. It was completely worth it—more than worth it. It was magical. It would have made me happy regardless, but the fact that I had a story to tell made it extra special.
Before I left, I sat down in a park that had a plaque to the Beatles and I listened to my favorite song of all time, “In My Life.” John started writing this song after taking a bus trip around his old childhood haunts. I can say that in my life, going to Liverpool was a great, seminal experience.
I went back to London and then the next day, sadly, had to say goodbye to my adopted homeland and go back to America.

Tomorrow Never Knows

2009-05-15T13:05:00.000-07:00

I continue my recollections of England, now moving on to Liverpool.

May 14
I do not often think that the universe likes me. On my third day on Jeopardy, I finally felt that the universe liked me. On that day, when the Final Jeopardy category came up, I felt a flush of, as John Lennon would say, instant karma. The category was “Beatles Songs.” The answer: “This song about an actual place went to number one in America.” The question: “What is Penny Lane?” I got it right, doubled my money, and won the show. I took this as a sign that the universe wanted to me to finally go to Liverpool—to Penny Lane, Strawberry Fields, and the Cavern Club. So on this day I got to fulfill one of my greatest dreams in life. I got to make a pilgrimage to Liverpool, the city in which my greatest heroes grew up. It was truly a dream come true. It was better than I ever expected, and I thank the universe for allowing me to go.
On the train up to Liverpool, I looked out at the gorgeous countryside in full bloom. Sheep actually grazed in the fields! And hedgerows! And little villages with church steeples! I got extremely excited on the train. I felt as if I was going to some mythical, magical place, a land of wonder. I also felt, for possibly only the second time in my life (after St. Paul’s only a few weeks earlier), like I was going to have a religious experience. I got into Lime Street Station and immediately, I began smiling. I didn’t stop smiling until I pulled back into the station in London a day later.
I made my way to where the first tour departed—the Magical Mystery Tour. As soon as I stepped out into that blue suburban sky, I just felt overwhelmingly happy. Not only happy, but positively giddy. Just walking down the street, I felt butterflies in my stomach. Once I stepped out into Liverpool, all real world troubles disappeared. I had entered Beatles-land, where everything is always positive and enthusiastic—where the joyous presence of the Beatles looks at you from every doorway and from the sides of buses. I waited for the Magical Mystery Tour in the tourist office in the main square.
When the bus pulled up, I smiled even more. It was a replica of the bus from the Magical Mystery Tour movie (which no one should ever watch). The guide was an adorable young man named Neil Brannan. He had horrible teeth and an authentic Liverpudlian accent that sounded just like music to my ears.
In fact, the accents throughout Liverpool were one of the best things. After years of listening to my beloved Beatles’ accents, I loved hearing the singsong lilt of the native Scouse accent. I understood every word perfectly. Everyone sounded like a Beatle! While I enjoyed the actual content of Neil’s tour, I enjoyed even more just listening to him talk. I think the Liverpool accent must have an inherent musicality in it. It certainly sounded like music to my ears. The man who gave me my ticket at the train station called me “love,” and the check in man at the hostel said, “cheers.” I found everyone immensely friendly.
So I went on the Magical Mystery Tour with the wonderful Neil. He had a great attitude and made lots of jokes. A lot of his jokes had to do with Liverpool football as better than Manchester United, or about the driver named Paddy, which seemed to refer to Liverpool’s large Irish population and history. We stopped at the gates of Strawberry Fields, a park-type area. We drove past all the spots mentioned in the song “Penny Lane” and then got off at the street sign. I enjoyed simply looking out the window and listening to Neil tell about meeting Paul and how the Beatles always came back to Liverpool for various things. I just absorbed the scenery and the sounds. A lot of the Beatles’ wit came from their Liverpool upbringing, and all of the tour guides I encountered had a similar wit. I really dug Neil. He had a very, very deep knowledge of all things Beatle, but he also seemed just like a regular Liverpool bloke.
One of the best moments came just after the stop at Penny Lane. When we got off at Penny Lane, I decided to tell Neil my story. I told him of how my Beatles obsession finally came to good use on a game show of all things. Neil thought it was a great story and agreed that I had really had a special experience. Back on the bus, he started to say how people ask him how he can go through the same spiel every day. Doesn’t he get bored talking about the Beatles day in and day out? And he said that no, he does not get bored, because he gets to hear great stories back from his guests. He then proceeded to tell the entire bus about my Jeopardy win and why I had come to Penny Lane. And everybody broke into applause! I did feel embarrassed, but I also felt happy. The applause was not just about being smart and knowing some random facts—it was about having a great story to tell and truly showing my love for the Beatles. The whole Jeopardy experience had made me feel rather bashful, but on the bus I felt that what had happened was truly special—special enough for Neil to announce to the whole bus that he had found a reason to love his job.
The tour ended at the Cavern Club, where the Beatles performed for several years. I stood on the (tiny) stage and nearly bumped my head on the low ceiling. I tried to imagine myself back in 1962 at one of the Beatles’ legendary concerts and tried to absorb the import of this small, dark, dank hole in the wall. Just across Mathew Street is the Cavern Pub, which has an impressive collection of Beatles memorabilia. It was happy hour and I was thirsty, so I decided to go over and have a pint. I had sat down when a man came up to my table and asked if he could sit down. I said sure, eager for an opportunity to talk to a fellow Beatles fan. Well, it turns out he was not necessarily a fan—he was a local who just came to have a few drinks and relax. Sadly, I never got his name. He assured me that he was not trying to pick me up or anything—his intentions were strictly honorable. I assured him right back that I would love to chat and did not find him at all suspicious. He said that I looked lonely, worried, and like I had a lot on my mind. He thought I looked a little down and unhappy. He wanted to see if I was okay. I tried to assure him that actually I felt entirely happy and carefree.
I told this man that I had come there for the Beatles, which he liked. Now, I do not think that this man was quite all there. He did say that he had just returned from Marrakesh, and he did sway quite a bit, so maybe he was still riding high on the Marrakesh express. He announced his age as 53. He just seemed slightly off somehow, although not in any sinister way. In fact, he reminded me of my Uncle Christopher. He had the air of a man who had lived hard and fast and now had a fuzzy memory. But he had a great enthusiasm for everything. He was not retarded or anything—he was just a bit shaky. He did offer to buy me a drink, but my legs already felt a little weak. I asked where I had come from, and he said he’d love to get back over to America. He had taken some road trips all around Europe.
We did talk about the Beatles. He said, and I have no reason not to believe them, that his mother had worked as a “cleaner” for the McCartneys—the cleaner for Paul’s father Jim when Paul bought his father a house “across the water,” meaning across the Mersey River. This man said he came from “across the water.” By that time, Paul’s father would certainly have had a cleaning woman and Paul frequently visited. So then my friend told a story of meeting Paul—everyone in Liverpool has a story of meeting Paul McCartney. He was down at the local pub when Paul walks in. Paul says hello to everyone and signs autographs. Paul then asks how the guy’s mother is doing. Now, this might seem far-fetched, but it fits perfectly in line with stories about Paul’s legendary friendliness and memory for people. I was appropriately open-mouthed and jaw-dropped at this guy’s story. I gasped and said many a “really!?” He liked my responses.
My friend asked what I did, what I studied, and what I wanted to do with my life. I said I didn’t have a clue. He then suggested that I go into “the law and order.” I said it was a possibility and he said that I would be good at it. In fact, he said, “You’ll be successful whatever you do. I know you’ll be alright. You’re a good one.” He basically said that he saw something good and solid in me. He saw that I had a good spirit. It honestly meant a lot to me. I’ll take it! Maybe the guy was just a loony old man, but maybe he really did see something. Maybe he did have some mystic insight. Maybe the universe again was trying to show me some kind of path, expressing itself through a shaky old man.
Soon after, I had to go check into my accommodations, but I assured my new friend very enthusiastically that I had greatly enjoyed talking with him. I said I was sorry to go and it had been lovely. We said goodbye and shook hands, and I walked away feeling like something very special had happened to me. I went to my hostel, checked in, and then found some dinner. I then walked back to the Cavern. As I walked back, the deserted streets surprised me. I mean, I was walking along the virtually deserted main pedestrian thoroughfare. See, a major, major soccer match happened to be on television that night, which explained the desertion. As I walked, the lyrics of “Good Morning, Good Morning” came into my head: “everything is closed it’s like a ruin.” And in that song, “somebody needs to know the time/ Glad that I’m here.” And sure enough, a passing man asked me the time, and I told him, because somebody needs to know the time, and I did!
I walked back to the Cavern, where I ran into Neil and some of his friends. As I approached the guys, all big northern English guys with beer bellies and bad teeth. One of the guys called to me, “Are you the Jeopardy girl?” I said yes and they told me that Neil had related my story. They all (four or five big guys) said that they though it was, indeed, a great story. And I had a feeling of the story aspect of it—that I had become the owner of a great story. I have a great story to tell, and somehow the greatness and wonderfulness of the story aspect had eluded me until that day in Liverpool. Maybe this is because Liverpool seems very obsessed with stories and storytelling—after all, the Beatles themselves are storytellers. And everyone seems to have a good Beatles story. And here I come with a Beatles story of my own, fitting in just like a local. Their opinions meant a lot to me because of my obsession with stories. I’ve always wanted to have a great story to tell to the important people in my life, and on that narrow alley in Liverpool, I may have found it.
So the guys said that I should come back “’round tomorrow midday” and they’d ring a reporter from the paper to interview me. This absolutely floored and flabbergasted me. I must have said “really” eight times. I walked away feeling as high as a kite. I went back to the hostel, watched the match on TV, and then fell into bed, feeling incredibly happy.

The Long and Winding Road

2009-05-15T13:01:00.000-07:00

May 11
Although London offers limitless possibilities for adventure, I had to take the opportunity to explore the rest of England. On this Sunday I went to see the dreaming spires of Oxford. I got myself some delightful, hot porridge at Paddington Station and got on the train to Oxford. I pulled into Oxford at 11:30, by which time the weather had turned blazingly hot. I had a specific mission in Oxford: to pay my respects to Professor Tolkien. J.R.R. Tolkien spent much of his adult life among the medieval bricks of Oxford as a Don teaching Anglo-Saxon. He produced most of his work in Oxford. I decided that in honor of my favorite Professor, I had to go on a pilgrimage.
I started at the Eagle and Child pub, a.k.a. the Bird and Baby, which is one amoungst many pubs in Oxford. This pub hosted weekly meetings of a group calling themselves the Inklings, which comprised Tolkien, his best friend and fellow professor C.S. Lewis, and a few others who have not reached the heights of literary glory. The best part of my day happened here. I went in all of the rooms searching for the commemorative plaque I knew existed. The plaque was there, as was a framed piece of paper with comments about the pub by Tolkien, Lewis, and the others. Photographs of the authors also adorned the walls. I a traditional English Sunday pub lunch of roast lamb and a pint of bitter.
As I sat next to the fireplace, under the plaque waiting for my lunch, an old man approached my table. He looked positively ancient and moved gingerly. He had the whole package—white hair, tweed coat, bad teeth. He actually looked quite a bit like Tolkien. He asked if I spoke English. I said yes, and he said that he had seen me looking around the pub, and asked if I was there for Tolkien. I answered yes, and he said that he thought he would tell me about the place. He sat down slowly across the wooden table from me. He informed me that I sat in the exact spot where the Inklings met—that the room I sat in had originally been the back room before they converted the back garden into another room. The fireplace had of course once crackled merrily with real fire, but now sat quiet. The old man explained that the place dated back to the 1600s when some King Charles came to college. He talked briefly about Tolkien and Lewis and which colleges they taught at.
This man was just absolutely precious. He said he was glad that I had finally sat down—he had wanted to get my attention before but couldn’t. He said that he had trouble with his walking so he couldn’t move fast enough to stop me. He was so sweet! He did ask me where I was from but did not ask me why I liked Tolkien. He looked very, very old—old enough to have shared a pint with the real Tolkien back in the day. He said he’d leave me to my lunch, which by that time had arrived. I should have asked him to stay, but he had to get on his way. He had lived his entire life in Oxford, which I would have loved to hear about. In retrospect, I should have asked him some questions of my own, but his mere presence delighted me so much that I didn’t even think of anything else to say. I bet he would have had some amazing stories to tell. But he has given me a story of my own to tell, for which I am grateful.
I thanked him many times. I said, “Thank you for talking to me” multiple times. I felt as if the spirit of Tolkien himself had touched me—that this man represented the spirit of Tolkien here on earth. I am so glad that I got to have even the brief experience I did with such a wonderful old gentleman. It also proved yet again that I have a special gift with elderly gentlemen—I have a unique ability to attract and make friends with honorable old men.
I finished my lunch and my beer, which made me surprisingly tipsy. I walked around the colleges and quads of Oxford. But it confused me a great deal. Unfortunately, I had gone on a Sunday, which meant that the crowds of students were mostly gone. Oxford is essentially decentralized—all the individual colleges have their own buildings and quads, spread throughout the city. I could not get a cohesive feelings for Oxford—I could not pick up on a particular vibe at any time. A colorfully decorated archway in the gray brick walls leads into the grassy quad of each college. At these archways, wardens or keepers of the keys/doors watched over, collecting admission. Somehow, I found my way into Exeter College without paying anything. And then somehow I also got into Christ Church, also illegally I believe. I inserted myself into a tour group in the Great Hall dining hall of Christ Church college, which served as the model for the Great Hall of Hogwarts in the Harry Potter movies. I wish—absolutely wish—that I could have a dining hall like that, which long tables lit by candles and portraits of illustrious people looking down upon you.
For the most part, I could only see the exteriors of the buildings, which were undeniably beautiful, but on the whole I just couldn’t feel it—somehow Oxford did not translate for me. So I then decided to try to find Tolkien’s grave. I had heard a wonderful story about Tolkien’s grave. The central story of his Silmarillion collection of myths is “The Tale of Beren and Luthien,” which tells the story of a pair of star-crossed lovers. Luthien, an immortal elf, gives up her immortality for the chance of meeting Beren again in some kind of afterlife. Tolkien’s gravestone bears the inscription “Beren” while his beloved wife Edith’s says “Luthien.” So I started walking. And walking. And walking. I could not find the darn cemetery. I walked a very long way, and I had grown very tired, hot, hungry, and thirsty. So for the first and only time in England, I had to give up. But I had reached a neighborhood that looked like a tiny and quaint English village. I could see cows grazing in a field. People rode bicycles around. Even this unfortunate detour proved fortunate, because I had found true hobbit country. I now understood the environment from which Tolkien drew his inspiration. I could imagine hobbits walking around, living their simple but honorable lives.
Both there and watching the gorgeous English countryside from the train, I understood on a deeper level from where hobbits come. The little village of Wolvercote, for that was its name, looked like something out of a PBS miniseries. I caught a bus back to Oxford and then caught the train back to London. I did enjoy immensely the views from the train—classic English countryside, punctuated occasionally by yellow fields—whole fields completely covered in yellow flowers. In between the green hills and dales, the forests and hedges, I could see little villages with church steeples. I felt like I was time-traveling—journeying back to a time of innocence, back to the Shires of the hobbits, full of good-hearted little people. Of course, I myself am an Elf, and while this was not quite elf country, I still enjoyed seeing it.

May 12
As the last week of my London journey started, I decided to finally make some purchases. I first went to Covent Garden, which had a very large branch of one of my favorite stores that I had discovered. I bought some tea things at the tea store and then an eggcup and a watch at the store Octopus. I then went on a picnic with my class in Hyde Park. It felt great to have a proper English picnic with English delicacies: Scotch eggs, pork pies, sausage rolls, egg and cress sandwiches, and jam donuts. It was really a lovely picnic. I then read my newspaper in the park. For the first and only time in England, I had run out of energy and felt tired and lethargic. I did not attempt to do too much.

May 13
On this day, I first went to the Café in the Crypt in St. Martin-in-the-Fields church, where I had a huge bowl of pea soup (I had never before, or ever since, liked pea soup) and bread pudding with custard. I then went to a gallery in Savile Row that had an exhibition of Linda McCartney’s (Paul’s late wife) photographs. This gallery was mere metres away from the Beatles’ office building, the site of their famous rooftop concert. The exhibition included an introduction from Paul, and it somehow made me feel very close to him. He seemed like a real person and a personal friend of mine. Linda happened to take one of my favorite Beatle pictures—Paul and John looking over something that Paul had written. The original print hung on the wall in the gallery.
I then went to Regent’s Park, the only London park which I had not yet visited. As usual, it was lovely and beautiful and made me very happy. In Regent’s Park I climbed Primrose Hill, which is a very large hill that affords some marvelous views of London. There I listened to the Beatles song “Fool on the Hill,” because an encounter with a strange gentleman on Primrose Hill had inspired Paul to write that song. The roses were just beginning to come out, and I did my best to look at all the newly formed buds.
Remember my day in Shepherd’s Bush and the fabulously retro diner? Well, I went back there for dinner. I had a steak and kidney pie at the Zippy Diner. The woman called me “dear” when she served me my pie, peas, chips, and tea. It was disgusting. But that was in fact the point of the exercise. I went in there fully intending to be disgusted.

Here Comes the Sun

2009-05-15T12:47:00.000-07:00

I continue my series recounting some of the best days of my life in England last year.

May 7
Today I had another wonderful day out in the green and flowers of London’s parks. On this day I walked all through Hyde Park—from the NW to SE corners, including through the Rose Garden. The weather was incredibly gorgeous—sunny and hot. The park looked absolutely lovely and beautiful. I listened to the Beatles’ album Revolver, which sounded fantastic. I also listened to “Here Comes the Sun,” which just filled me full of happiness. I ate an ice cream sitting on a bench in a lovely garden. Unfortunately, the roses in the rose garden were not yet blooming, but other flowers and bushes had exploded in color.
Unfortunately, I then had to interrupt my ramble through the park with a class visit to the Tate Modern, a converted power station full of modern “art.” It was, predictably, awful. Then I went to the Café in the Crypt of St. Martin-in-the-Fields Church for tea. By tea, I mean a plate of chocolate cake, some kind of loaf cake, and a scone with clotted cream and a jar of jam. Before I went to London, I dreamed of having clotted cream and scones, and to my great surprise, I found that the best clotted cream, jam, and scones could be found at Marks and Spencer’s, a chain of grocery stores. M&S offered not only regular groceries, but a fabulous selection of ready-made, take-away food. But I did still enjoy having my afternoon tea on real china with a real pot of tea.
I then walked in the direction of Fleet Street. I passed some very interesting looking buildings that house the Royal Courts of Justice. But by then it had gotten late and I had to go to the theatre.

May 8
Another utterly fantastic day! I went to Hampstead Heath, which is basically an area in the middle of London that has been left wild. The city at some time in the past designated a huge area to do absolutely nothing with. The results are wonderful English forests and meadows right smack dab in the middle of the city. I started out in an open, hilly area with some trees scattered around. I felt like I had suddenly walked into a painting or a picture book. I came up out of the trees and suddenly saw a huge meadow with grass wafting in the breeze. It was Wordsworth country. I had a mysterious feeling of having seen the place before, but I didn’t know where. And again, I felt like I had gone back in time hundreds of years. I could imagine this landscape supporting a magical time of kings and heroes and villains and battles.
I then spent a long time wandering on criss-crossing paths in a more heavily wooded area. Endless paths ran every which way. I let myself get lost and chose whichever path looked more interesting. This part of the Heath was Lord of the Rings country. I saw some wonderfully Ent-ish looking trees. It was green and lush and birds sang all over the place. Except for the occasional plane buzzing overhead, I felt like I could have been in another century or another world.
I had to find my way out so I could get some lunch. I had lunch and walked a little through the Hampstead neighborhood. It felt very village-y, although maybe even a little too posh. It had some wonderful houses with brightly colored doors and riots of flowers. I then went back onto the Heath. And there I saw a very curious thing: children laughing and playing pretend in a tree they had climbed. It was really an excellent climbing tree. The children showed each other their “rooms” in the tree.
Inspired by the delightful children, I decided to try to climb a tree. Having no tree climbing abilities or experience, and wearing sandals, I didn’t get very far, but I made a noble effort. I then climbed to the top of a very large hill, from where I could see lots of London. Throughout the day I listened to acoustic Led Zeppelin songs and the Lord of the Rings soundtrack. I felt like I was walking through Middle Earth or merry olde England. I felt, in the best possible way, like a child. I spent about 5 hours out on the Heath, my muscles becoming pleasantly tired. Before the show I stopped off at Marks & Spencer’s for some scones and clotted cream and jam.

May 9
I’ve found in traveling that I create some of my best memories in relation to food. Eating forms such a big part of our lives that meals associate themselves powerfully with particular moments in our lives. I have many memories of food that I ate during my time in London. I had many very, very good meals, some mediocre ones, and some when I really just needed to put calories in my body. I had many, many sandwiches. England loves its sandwiches and makes them in every possible variety. My favorite became Wensleydale (cheese) and carrot chutney on whole wheat from Marks and Spencer’s. I would usually get a wonderfully flavored, thick and creamy yogurt to go along with it, like toffee and pear. But on this particular day in London, I think I found food heaven.
It was called the Borough Market—an outdoor food market that goes up every Friday in an area called Southwark. I don’t think I’ve ever wanted to eat so many things in my life. Not only did it offer a feast for the stomach, but a feast for the eyes. The food looked beautiful—stacks of artisan bread, mounds of chocolate, heaps of sweets, piles of meat pies, whole fish packed in ice, wheels of cheese, jars of jam in every color of the rainbow. It was the finest collection of food and foodstuffs I’ve ever seen. Organic juice bars! Pastries! An entire stand devoted to mushrooms! Tins of fragrant spices! Produce with the dirt still on it! I had some wild boar sausage, 2 half pints of cider (which made me quite drunk), apple-raspberry juice, a blueberry flapjack pastry, and a tub of clotted cream, which I ate with my finger in the churchyard of Southwark Cathedral. I was drunk off the cider by that point.
Many of the booths and stands offered free samples, of which I partook liberally. One stand sold different kinds of olive oil, and offered tiny cubes of bread dipped in the precious oils. I tried a cube of bread dipped in truffle oil. It honestly made me go weak at the knees. I’d never before encountered the taste of the elusive truffle, but even just the little bit of oil in my mouth convinced me that the truffles are worth every penny of the outrageous price. I just wanted to eat everything and buy everything. But I had to watch my wallet and my waistline. Prices on the whole were actually quite reasonable, and lots of locals picked their way through all the sumptuous goodies. I then walked briefly past the Royal Courts of Justice and decided that I could stand being a lawyer if I could work in a building that looked like a castle, with spires and iron gates flanked by dragons.

May 10
I constantly found myself thanking my lucky stars that I had come to England in the spring so I could witness, as Shakespeare would say, the darling buds of May. On this Saturday I made my way out to southwestern London to the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew. I unfortunately could not take any pictures, because my roommates had unplugged my charging camera the night before. But maybe it was actually a blessing that I could not use my camera, because I would have had to take literally hundreds of pictures of the phenomenally gorgeous gardens. Instead, I was able to focus my attention on the moment and the present.
I don’t believe that I have ever seen such a rich profusion of vegetation. I felt like a princess walking through a fairy-land of my own forests and gardens. I walked through a sea of bluebells—a path cut through an entire meadow filled with bluebells. It felt like something out of a happily-ever-after fairy tale. Trees of every variety punctuated the broad meadows of flowers and carpets of grass. I spent 15 minutes smelling lilacs, which had an unbelievably wonderful fragrance. Even besides the lilac garden, in any part of the enormous park, when I breathed in deeply, I could smell the scent of growing things through the air. Some areas smelled woody, pungent, and mysterious, while other areas smelled sweet and innocent. The first time I traveled to Germany, at the age of nine, the greenness and flowers absolutely awed me. This awed me in a similar way.
As the afternoon wore on, dark gray storm clouds began to roll in. A few heavy drops came down, and I knew that a downpour would soon start. The thunder began to roll. So I headed for an incredible tree that I had spotted earlier. It had huge overhanging branches that made a genuine canopy of leaves—actually more like an igloo of leaves. I went “in” the tree—pushed my way through the web of leaves. Inside I found a huge tangle of roots and branches. Right as I got inside, the downpour came. For about 10 minutes sheets of rain came down. But I stayed dry in my tree. Only a few drops got me. It was so awesome! In my tree, waiting out the storm, I felt like an elf princess. I actually welcomed the rain just so I could have the experience of sheltering beneath the tree.
I had a pleasant walk back through the village of Kew and Richmond. I passed a very quaint tea-house with an old fireplace and blue china. But with the day as hot as it was, I actually did not feel like tea in front of a fire. I passed people playing cricket on the village green. I watched for a few minutes but could not fathom it. It all looked so quaint and lovely and like everyone enjoyed the small pleasures of life. I returned to the flat fully contented with life.

Sunny Afternoon/My Generation

2009-05-07T16:37:00.001-07:00

May 5
Sometimes the best things happen to you when you don’t expect them. On this day in London, I did not have great expectations for my chosen outing, yet it turned out to be one of my most favorite days during the entire trip. I decided to go to Chiswick House. The neighborhood of Chiswick is only 15 minutes by Tube from central London, but it felt like a lovely English village. Although I only traveled through two travel zones of the London Underground, I felt like I had journeyed out to a whole other county—one filled with rustic, quaint villages. I intended to go directly to Chiswick House, but got a little bit turned around, which ended up being a happy mistake. I walked up and down a few impossibly lovely streets. The weather was incredible—sunny and hot. At the end of the day when I peeled off my skinny jeans that I mistakenly wore, my legs had turned blue—the heat and humidity had made the dye run.
Sidewalk cafes, wonderfully authentic fish and chip shops, organic grocery stores, and beautiful row houses lined the streets of Chiswick, which were for once absent of tourists. Here I could observe Londoners in their natural habitat at a slightly slower pace than in central London. Everybody in this little neighborhood seemed so happy—stylish young parents pushed well behaved children in delightful strollers, flowers bloomed in front of every single house, and people sat chatting under umbrella-d tables.
I finally made it to Chiswick House, and from the very moment I walked on the grounds—down a wide lane lined with enormous shade trees—I knew I would love this place. The House (just an old aristocrat’s house) has extensive grounds, and before I went in the actual building, I wandered for a few hours in the grounds. It was so incredibly beautiful! This was prime English park/woodland. It had so many green trees and shrubs and huge ivied trunks. Parts of the grounds grew wild with free-growing trees and shrubs, and some areas had been carefully gardened—vast swaths of cut grass, manicured hedges, a lake with swans and a weeping willow, and a white bridge over a brook. It felt so wonderfully English. Walking through the woodland, I listened to the hobbit parts of the Lord of the Rings soundtrack, because this environment looked a lot like hobbit country, verging on elf country in some parts. I simply could not believe the wonderful vibrant shades of green, leafy, deciduous, muddy forest and parkland.
In the more manicured, gardened parts I listened to the Beatles, including the songs “Rain” and “Paperback Writer,” because the Beatles filmed the promotional videos for these songs in those very gardens. I also listened to “Blackbird” while lying on my back in a thick, warm bed of grass, and let me tell you, it never sounded so perfect.
I finally actually went into the house. Normally visitors just walk themselves through it, but by my good fortune, I happened to arrive just as an architect began a guided tour through the house explaining the architecture. I joined the tour and actually learned quite a lot about architecture. A rather barmy old aristocrat had built the house with some very idiosyncratic architectural choices. I rather liked the decoration of the house—mostly simple, but with just enough adornment to look fancy. I particularly liked a wallpaper made of royal blue velvet.
Coming out of the house, I listened to the Kinks’ “Sunny Afternoon,” which with its subject of eccentric rich people lazing on sunny afternoons seemed to relate. This particular Monday happened to be a bank holiday, and the grounds hosted many happy families enjoying their day off. Children frolicked with balls, old people walked together arm in arm, and spaniels and terriers ran around yapping. The children were actually playing with each other and not with some handheld electronic devices! It was, in a word, idyllic. I felt like I had stepped back in time or rather, had stepped into a postcard or into The Secret Garden. It was nostalgic, country English life. Finally I tore myself away, got an ice cream back in the village, and made the short journey back to central London, my body pleasantly tired from so much tramping through the forest.

May 6
Back when I first visited London, I had not yet made a discovery that made a huge impact on my life. I had not yet fallen in love with the Who, and thus I did not need to make a pilgrimage to the origins of this most London-y of bands. So on this trip to London, now that I had found my musical soulmate in Who songwriter/guitarist Pete Townshend, I had to visit the London neighborhoods that had made such an impact on the Who’s music, style, and ideas. So on this day I went to Shepherd’s Bush and Carnaby Street. Back in the mid-60s, the Who became the unofficial voice of the Mod movement. Mod only really ever happened in England, so we Americans have a hard time understanding it. I’ve had to rely on magazines and movies to really explain Mod to me, but I never understood it quite so well as I did walking down the street in Shepherd’s Bush, wearing my Who leather jacket, and listening to early Who hits. I won’t attempt an explanation of Mod here. You can try Wikipedia for that.
Shepherd’s Bush is a neighborhood in southwest London that even today retains a distinct feeling of post-war, lower middle class English life—the exact environment from which the Who emerged. I visited the site of the Goldhawk Social Club, where the Who made their name with their explosive (literally), revolutionary live show. This was the only specific place I visited; otherwise I just walked around the neighborhood, listening to the Who, and absorbing the ambience. As on so many days in London, I felt like I had time-travelled, only this time only back to the 1950s and 1960s. The strongest feeling of the past came from the food places. I got my first fish and chips at a real, small fish and chips stand where they only serve fish and chips and still wrap it in newspaper, the grease seeping through the paper. I got my fish and chips before I saw the Zippy Diner, which was a straight throwback to the 50’s: mixed grill, egg and bacon, beans on toast, steak and kidney pie. I was so full of chips that I only managed a blackcurrant milkshake.
But while I drank my milkshake on a vinyl stool, the proprietress of the establishment actually mistook me for someone she knew! She started to ask me a question about some apparently mutual acquaintance when she realized that she had never before set eyes on me. I felt immensely proud to fit in so well and proud that I had been mistaken for a local. And although no one noticed my Who jacket or said anything about it, I felt incredibly good wearing it. Listening to “I Can’t Explain” and “My Generation,” I felt like an authentic Shepherd’s Bush Mod. The neighborhood still held a feeling of overwhelming mundane-ness and English working class suburbia.
I then headed to Carnaby Street, which was one of the centers of Swinging London, a small lane tucked away off Oxford Street that hosted all the hippest clothing stores, where all the Fab people got their “gear.” Carnaby Street does still have some very interesting shops, but all in all it has not retained any kind of special atmosphere. Sadly, it no longer swings. Lo and behold, the Lambretta store had lots of Who merchandise, and after many goings in and out of different stores, I finally bought a Who shirt there. But after I bought it, I discovered some stores selling vintage Mod gear, including the Ben Sherman target T-shirts made famous by Keith Moon. The proprietor of one of these shops noticed my Who jacket, which made me very happy. I had a truly outstanding take-away dinner of sweet potato falafel from a “fast-food” place. At the end of the day, I felt like I had accomplished my Who pilgrimage and shown my dedication to the band.

Here, There, and Everywhere

2009-05-03T16:45:00.000-07:00

May 3
I love a good market and London has many good markets. On this particular Saturday I decided to try the Portobello Road market. I say “try” because it took a lot of effort. I almost had to give up because of the unbelievable crowd in the Antiques Market portion. Portobello Road had basically become a sea of people moving en masse forward. Before I had even reached the market I almost left from panic. I could barely move it was so crowded. I considered giving up, but I struggled and pressed on. Once I got through the Antiques portion and got to the food stands, I felt much better. Then I began to have fun and enjoy myself. At the time, the food stands utterly amazed me with their variety. A week later I would go to the Borough Market, a truly jaw-dropping food market. But Portobello was my first market and it definitely opened my eyes. The food looked, visually speaking, beautiful: fruits and vegetables and whole fresh fish on ice and loaves of bread. In addition to this fresh food, a whole variety of stands sold hot foods like sausages and falafel and quiche and paella and Ghanaian stew. I ate my way through the stands, particularly enjoying the fresh strawberries. After the food part, the market got rather trashy, filled mostly with cheap clothes and jewelry. However, a number of nice permanent shops lined the streets. I went into one particularly delightful toy shop and one shop with a huge variety of rock and roll T-shirts.
The people at Portobello were a mix of tourists and locals, but I could tell that far more locals confined themselves to the food portion. I saw many children dutifully staying with their parents while the adults picked over the fish and produce. In the variety and sheer number of stalls and stands, no market in America can compare to Portobello Road market. As with any market, though, you must pick your way through it and distinguish the good from the bad, the worthwhile from the trashy. I did manage to do that and felt like a genuine Londoner for it.

May 4
Rarely in London did my plans go awry, but even when they did, I managed to improvise a new plan that gave me just as much pleasure as the old plan. This day proved such a day of revised plans. I started out intending to go to the East End markets. I couldn’t find one of them, and the other just did not give me a good feeling. So I wound up at Buckingham Palace just in time to catch the Changing of the Guards. The place of course was absolute madness—people everywhere and policemen on huge horses controlling the crowds. But I fought my way up to the gates. I couldn’t see very well, but well enough to get a general idea of the proceedings. And the ceremony and trappings of the whole thing instantly drew me in. The red coats and shiny helmets just suckered me in. There’s just something about the red of the jackets and the brass of the helmets and trumpets that enchants me. I can’t get enough of the pomp and circumstance. I followed the exiting guard back to their barracks, walking alongside them as they marched back. This gave me a much better view.
I ended up at Trafalgar Square, where a happening was happening. It was a celebration of the Sikh New Year. Thousands of Sikhs filled the square. I’ve never seen so many turbaned heads. Music came from a huge tent erected at the base of Nelson’s Column—at first sacred chanting, then tabla music, then Bengali hip-hop. Another tent offered free food—I stood in line for 15 minutes to get a quite tasty and filling plate of chickpeas in a sauce, a samosa, and pita bread. While I ate my tasty food, I listened to the music and watched the people. I admit that I found the look of most of the people quite interesting: completely normal, Western clothes, but with turbans. Some of the older men wore quite well-cut suits and topped it all off with an elegantly folded turban. I was not the only white person, but definitely in the minority. However, I did not feel at all uncomfortable or unsafe being one of the few white people in attendance. I found the whole thing very edifying and entertaining. In America we have similar festivals celebrating minority life, but we don’t often have them at places symbolic of American majority culture. Trafalgar Square and Nelson’s Column are symbols of the British Empire and British dominant culture. How interesting that the city of London would allow the Sikh New Year to celebrate right there. It seemed to me a very tolerant embrace of Britain’s considerable minority population and evidence of how Britain has embraced and integrated the culture of its former colonies. I am really very glad that I got to experience such a thing. The music was also quite nice.
I popped into the National Gallery for a few minutes but of course got bored immediately. I just cannot do paintings for some reason. So I walked up Regent’s Street, which is the prime shopping street of London. I went into H&M and Topshop, but I soon realized yet again that 1) I don’t like to shop and 2) I don’t know how to shop. I just got completely overwhelmed and confused and decided not to bother.
I then set off to have dinner with some real English people—the brother of the wife of my cousin. It was the man and his wife, their toddler son, the man’s father, and then a family of distant relatives visiting from New Zealand. And I had an absolutely delightful time, helped of course by a couple of glasses of wine. My hosts had cooked a proper English Sunday dinner of a roast, gravy, and potatoes. Normally I hate this kind of food, but on this occasion I ate it willingly. The conversation was excellent, and if I do say so myself, I was charming, vivacious, interesting, and polite. I talked about Lord of the Rings and Sir Edmund Hillary with the Kiwis, about Mods with the man, and about Wordsworth with the old grandfather. I got there at 7:00 and didn’t leave until 11:00. I had a genuinely lovely time.
The old man, who is the father of the wife of my cousin, was a wonderful breed of eccentric old English gentleman. I found him immensely entertaining. He could have walked right out of some kind of television show—an eccentric, educated, cultured English gentleman. He did know about the internet, but otherwise seemed to belong to a different age. He could have walked right out of the 19th century. My host drove me back to the Tube station—the one time in my entire month in England that I got into a car. And of course I almost got in on the wrong side.

Across the Universe

2009-05-02T13:56:00.000-07:00

May 1
On this day I saw one of the most beautiful, if not the most beautiful, man-made thing I’ve ever laid eyes on: St. Paul’s Cathedral. It simply took my breath away with its beauty and majesty. A picture can simply not do it justice because no picture could convey the sheer size of the place. Walking in and seeing all the gold and the marble columns, I felt like in Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring when the great hall of Khazad-dum becomes illuminated. I actually got chills. It was just so beautiful and awe-inspiring. You can see the dome of St. Paul’s from anywhere in London, and when you actually get inside and under the dome, the size and height just completely overwhelm you. I don’t think I’ve ever had that kind of reaction before to any man-made place or thing. Later, walking through the Cathedral, I listened to the soundtrack of Lord of the Rings at that particular part.
St. Paul’s is relatively new for a London landmark, dating only from the 17th century. The brilliant architect Sir Christopher Wren designed it, and while I walked around the cathedral, an historian/tour guide dressed as Wren talked to a group of schoolchildren and explained the history and architecture of the building. I tried to listen as much as I could, although I did not join the school children on the black-and-white tiled floor. The Cathedral had several close calls in WWII; British forces successfully defused a bomb that had struck the cathedral that, if exploded, would have completely destroyed the building. London does not have many skyscrapers, so St. Paul’s is still visible from pretty much anywhere in London.
I climbed all 439 steps up to the very top of St. Paul’s. The actual climb itself, aside from the magnificent view, was incredible. First of all, you have to climb most of those steps on stone spiral staircases. You then walk through the narrowest of corridors made of stone with ceilings so low I had to watch my head. It felt magical. I felt like I was in some magical, mythical setting or in some fairy tale. And once I got to the top and stepped out, I lost my breath. I could see forever. The wind blew furiously, and ominously grey clouds loomed overhead, but I felt on top of the world. It really felt awesome and important. I took picture after picture of the view. I looked in all directions and tried to find other places I had visited. With my hair blowing around me looking out over the stone wall, I felt like some mythical princess on a tower, looking out at an enchanted landscape.
We all know that I am not a religious person, but in St. Paul’s I actually felt sacred and spiritual. In that space with its dome and gold and beauty, it is impossible not to feel in some way spiritual. I had previously considered Westminster Abbey my favorite church in the world, but St. Paul’s now has that honor. I had a bit of a revelation—I had always wondered why so many churches have such gilded, decorate ceilings. St. Paul’s in particular has a magnificent ceiling. Finally I understood; when you look up, you see the glory of god.
Westminster Abbey has a kind of whimsical atmosphere, but St. Paul’s has a much more somber atmosphere. Maybe it’s because sound echoes so well in there, or maybe it’s because the marble shines so brightly. Or maybe because St. Paul’s has a more military bent to it—both Lord Nelson and the Duke of Wellington, Britain’s top two military heroes, have their tombs here. St. Paul’s also hosted Winston Churchill’s state funeral, and this fact and its close calls during the Blitz have turned it into a symbol of Britain’s strength during WWII, its “finest hour.” St. Paul’s also has memorials to the many wars that Britain has fought and memorials to specific war heroes like Florence Nightingale and T.E. Lawrence. Most people know St. Paul’s as the venue for Prince Charles and Princess Diana’s wedding.
I would waste my breath trying to describe St. Paul’s Cathedral in words. You simply have to see it to believe it. While I had a sense of history at Westminster Abbey, at St. Paul’s I truly got a sense of the spiritual. During class, we each had to do a little show and tell about a piece of art we had seen. Most people came in describing art that they had seen on walls in galleries and museums. I talked about St. Paul’s, which incorporates art in every square inch. The whole building is a work of art. And this art actually has purpose—to bring people together and show them the beauty of God, King, and Country. In St. Paul’s, thousands of people can gather together and experience this art together. This beauty does not just hang on a wall—it is beauty for beauty’s sake, and for the sake of the country and its faith.
I then walked over the Millennium footbridge to the Globe theatre, a replica of the theatres of Shakespeare’s day. While I theatre itself provided lots of interest to drama nerds like myself, sadly, the production of King Lear did not.

May 2
Not only does London have many, many treasures of British culture, it also holds many treasures from the rest of the world. Most of these reside in the British Museum. Depending on whom you ask, Britain either stole many of these objects from their colonies, or decided to keep them safe and secure from overseas turmoil. I happen to hold with the latter view. With all the war and unrest in the Middle East and Mediterranean world, if Britain had not taken the Rosetta Stone, the Assyrian gates, or the Elgin marbles into its safekeeping, who knows what could have happened to these priceless treasures? On this day a year ago, I spent the entire day at the British Museum.
I let myself wander all over the museum with no real set plan. The British Museum kindly does not charge admission, so it tends to get quite crowded. I saw all the Egyptian, Greek, and early European collections. And it really did affect me. I just couldn’t believe that all of these things have survived literally thousands of years and that it is still all so beautiful. One thought kept coming back to me: “If the ancient world had this much beauty in it, we haven’t moved forward. We’ve moved backward.” Stone carvings from Egypt and Assyria and marble friezes from ancient Greece have retained all of their majesty and beauty, but where has all the majesty gone from today’s world? The world today has none of the majesty or mystery on display in the British Museum—no sense of awe.
And compared to all of the stone and metalwork in the museum, today’s world also has no artistry. As I looked at all of these objects that have survived so many years, I kept thinking about how much labor and artistry went into all of them. I can’t imagine the skill necessary to carve granite into statutes, or to make ropes of gold, or to etch figures into silver plates. It boggles my mind to think of how much time, care, and inspiration went into every object in there. And how many other treasures did not survive or lie still undiscovered under desert sands in far off countries?
At many times during my London journey, I had the feeling of living in the wrong time. I’ve always felt that I did not belong to the 1990s and 2000s. I’ve always felt that I belonged in at least a different decade, if not a different century or millennium. This feeling came up particularly strongly at the British Museum. I belong to a time of marble, stone, and metal, not of plastic. I belong to a time of the Odyssey, Beowulf, or Shakespeare. Why do all of these objects (for really, they are just objects) call to me so much? Why do pieces of porcelain, metal, and stone provoke in me such a wistful longing to return to the place and times of their making?
The British Museum also made me think strongly of Lord of the Rings. Reading the novel and watching the movies, I constantly wish that I could see up close those things that Tolkien describes. He gives even inanimate objects a history and a life. In the British Museum you can see the very kind of things that Tolkien envisioned—swords carried by kings, beautiful and quite possible magical rings, helmets and goblets and carved pillars of stone.
The British Museum offers a rare opportunity: to travel to all corners of the globe and to travel back in time to the distant past, all without leaving the confines of one very large building in Bloomsbury. I took full advantage of that opportunity. I walked through the museum and imagined myself in different times and places, trying to wrap my head around all of these different cultures and people and beliefs. If the museum had to give all the sarcophagi back to Egypt, the carved Lion Gates of Ninevah back to Iraq, or the Elgin marbles back to Greece, a small number of courageous travelers would have to go to multiple unstable places to see these treasures. In the British Museum, millions more travelers can see these treasures in one stop and still come away with a different idea of the areas from whence they come.

A Day in the Life

2009-04-30T16:48:00.000-07:00

Again I continue recalling where I was and what I did exactly a year ago this week, in London.

April 28
When you try to absorb as much British culture as I do, you start to see a few places come up again and again. I particularly love British rock and roll, and in the context of the British Invasion, one place pops up again as the best venue in town: the Royal Albert Hall. While I didn’t get to actually see a concert there, I did take a tour.
The Royal Albert Hall looks like a big red velvet cupcake sitting in the middle of Knightsbridge. It is a circular arena that plays host to everything from rock concerts and operas to tennis matches. Queen Victoria built it in honor of her beloved husband Prince Albert. It was one of few London landmarks that did not sustain damage in WWII air raids, partially because the instantly recognizable round roof provided a good landmark for bombers in blacked-out London.
Albert Hall is huge—huge enough to hold 4,000 holes, provided that the holes are rather small (see “A Day in the Life”). As we walked through the halls and stalls, I remembered all the times I had seen this space on a concert DVD. I got a peak at the Royal Box. It was a very interesting tour through one of the greatest venues in the world.
I then went to that Knightsbridge landmark—Harrod’s. Unfortunately, Harrod’s has become just another tourist attraction. The hallowed Food Halls, while packed with beautiful but ridiculously overpriced things (like $1,000 Beluga caviar), couldn’t hold a candle to the sumptuous goodies at Fortnum and Mason’s or the food heaven I would soon encounter at Borough Market. On the other hand, at Harrod’s you can actually see designer clothes that you see movie stars wearing in the tabloids. And Harrod’s does have a form of Shoe Heaven: a room filled with Christian Louboutins. Despite the price tags and the beautiful things, Harrod’s no longer has a feeling of exclusiveness. I had made sure to wear my most stylish outfit, but it honestly wasn’t necessary.
On the way to the show I swung by King’s Cross station, where I visited Platform 9 ¾. The folks there have been good enough to put up a sign and stick half a luggage trolley through the wall for Harry Potter fans.

April 29
If you can find them, London offers a huge array of free attractions. On this day I took advantage of St. Martin-in-the-Field Church’s series of free concerts. I absolutely loved St. Martin-in-the-Fields church. It stands right on Trafalgar Square, across Charing Cross Road from the National Gallery. On the outside, it has a perfect white steeple with a bright blue clock. The inside has plenty of bright light coming from both windows and beautiful chandeliers. A bright silver organ looks down to clean, wide pews. When I walked in I immediately thought, “I want to get married here.” It doesn’t have any medieval heaviness, but is rather light and airy and clean. St. Martin’s has free lunchtime concerts a few days a week; on the day I went the program featured young, teenaged small ensembles. I loved sitting there in the beautiful church and looking as if I too was just another Londoner here on her lunch break.
I then went to lunch in the Café in the Crypt of St. Martin’s, which became one of my favorite restaurants. Many of London’s museums and other attractions have marvelous refectories (cafeterias in American). It’s not just heat-lamped pizza here—you can get wonderful fresh, hot food served on real dishes. And of course every refectory offers beer and wine. The Café in the Crypt was one such place where I returned several times for hearty, warm, nutritious, traditionally English fare.
I then wandered around The City. The City is England’s version of Wall Street. Technically speaking, the City of London is the original Roman walled portion of the larger metropolitan area. The City of London is the financial heart of the country and one of the financial hearts of the world. At its center stand the formidable and foreboding marble columns of the Bank of England. And would you believe that in the City you can still see men in pinstriped suits and bowler hats carrying black leather cases and a copy of The Times folded under their arms? I felt like I had stepped back 50 or 75 years. Many of these men had wonderful salt-and-pepper moustaches. Somehow, the presence of the pinstripes reassured me. Somehow they suggest that these men do not take money lightly. They care enough about the financial security of their country and the world to respect the traditions of the past. For whatever reason, I would feel more secure about the world’s finances if all stockbrokers wore pinstripes, bowler hats, and mutton chops.

April 30
This day I had a play at 3:30, so I didn’t have much time for entertainment. I went to the British Library, which includes not just a world-class research library (Britain's version of the Library of Congress), but a museum section that displays some of the most important documents in British history. I especially appreciated the concept of displaying books because so much of my fascination with Britain has come courtesy of its rich literary tradition. I walked through the St. Pancras’ neighborhood in the rain on my way to the Library, feeling very much like the poets I so admire.
The centerpiece of the British Library’s collection is a copy of Magna Carta, the foundational document of democracy. The piece of skin from way back in 1215 stays in a special controlled room. The script is now pretty much unreadable, but videoscreens explain the history and meaning of the document. The Library also has a fine collection of beautiful illuminated Bibles, plus some equally beautiful copies of the Koran and the Bhavagad-Gita. Then there is the one remaining manuscript of Beowulf—the one example of Anglo-Saxon poetry that survived a fire by pure chance. Then there is a First Folio of Shakespeare, plus some letters in Shakespeare’s own handwriting.
The exhibit also has letters from various poets, including Wordsworth and Yeats. Seeing the actual handwriting of some of my favorite authors really excited me. And then there was my favorite case: the Beatles case, which includes the handwritten lyrics of “Yesterday,” “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” and “Ticket to Ride,” among others. At any auction house in the world, these lyrics would fetch literally millions of dollars. But the British Library has deemed these Beatles lyrics of enough cultural significance to display them alongside Beowulf. It truly shows how much Britain treasures and values the Beatles.
On a larger level, just as Poet’s Corner in Westminster Abbey did, the British Library shows how the country values its language and literature. Secular poetry and popular music receive as much attention as political and religious documents. In the National Archives in Washington, D.C., for example, Whitman’s poetry does not sit alongside the Declaration of Independence, although it provides an even more eloquent defence of democracy. But the people and government of Britain have realized that despite all their political, religious, scientific, and economic contributions to the world, their cultural and literary contributions deserve just as much attention.
Britain is an extraordinarily literate country. One way you see this is in the newspaper consumption. Everybody in London takes at least one newspaper each day. There are actually two free newspapers in London that go out every single day. At about 5:00 in the afternoon, stacks and stacks of newspapers begin to appear on street corners and outside every Tube station. The people handing them out wear bright neon vests and are every age and ethnicity you can imagine. I got into the habit of taking a newspaper everyday, and by the end of my stay in London, I went into withdrawal by 5:30 if I didn’t get my newspaper. With a folded newspaper under my arm, I felt like a genuine Londoner. A newspaper, more than anything, is the ultimate London accessory. Every street has a newsagent kiosk that sells hundreds of newspapers and magazines, plus the usual candy bars, drinks, and ciggies. Some of these kiosks on the larger streets have newspapers in literally 20 or 30 different languages—some in entirely different alphabets. You can get newspapers in languages from Spanish to German to Urdu and Mandarin. Now, of course the free papers are not up to the caliber of the Times, but I still loved the opportunity to have a free way of immersing myself into the culture. I absolutely loved the experience of getting my free paper every afternoon like millions of other Londoners.
At the British Library I also had a wonderful hot meal in their refectory.

Magical Mystery Tour

2009-04-26T17:52:00.000-07:00

April 27
I concluded my first week in London with an absolutely magical Sunday. I think I can look back and say that this day was one of the best days of the trip and maybe one of the best days of my life.
I started with a full English breakfast, which consists of eggs, bacon, sausage, toast, tea, and baked beans. Around London you see many signs advertising “Full Breakfast All Day.” It actually doesn’t look too different from many American breakfasts, except for the baked beans. You can get these breakfasts at one of many thousands of little greasy diners on every street.
I then went on a Beatles tour. I had gone on one of these tours my first time in London, but I still wanted to go again. A rather barmy man named Richard operates these walking tours. You meet him at a particular Underground station entrance at a specific time, and he takes you walking around to Beatles sites around London. Richard has horrible teeth, a horrible haircut, and carries around a photo of himself and Paul McCartney like some kind of talisman. This magical mystery tour took in the Beatles’ offices at Savile Row, where they performed their last show on the roof; Paul McCartney’s offices at Soho Square; the “birthplace of Beatlmania,” a particular theater, Trident Studios, where the group recorded “Hey Jude;” Carnaby Street, the center of Swinging London; and of course, as the piece de resistance of the tour, Abbey Road.
I love how these tours show the camaraderie and understanding that exists between fellow Beatle fans. For example, crossing Abbey Road is extremely difficult, but Beatle fans gladly exchange cameras and take patient pictures while you cross and recross the zebra stripes. We Beatle fans kindly take each other’s pictures on the steps of the actual studio building, because we know how important it is. I exchanged cameras with a young Indian man, and though we came from vastly different places and didn’t know each other’s names or anything else, we shared our love for the Beatles.
Abbey Road is located in a leafy suburban neighborhood, and the studio buildings themselves stand between ordinary houses. Despite the neighborhood, the road itself is quite busy, and no stoplights or stop signs give any kind of guard to the crosswalk. And while the photographer of the official cover got to stop traffic and stand on a ladder in the middle of the street, fans today must stand on a traffic island slightly off-center from the road. All these things make an effective photograph rather hard to take.
But nevertheless, Abbey Road truly feels like a special place. You can walk behind the gates into a small carpark; a set of steps leads up to the entrance. And I just thought about if I had lived in the 60s—would I have waited here for them to come out? I kept thinking of the magical room just beyond those doors where they created the songs that have meant so much to me. A wall separates the courtyard from the sidewalk, and on this wall visitors have written the most wonderful messages—messages of thanks and of peace and of love to the Beatles. Some simply draw flowers, while others say that someone “was here.” The managers of the studios have to paint over this wall every few months because so many well-wishers have expressed their feelings. It truly warms my heart to see so much love and gratitude. Paul was definitely right about love: what you make will equal what you take. Thousands of people come to Abbey Road to return the love that they have taken from the Beatles.
After the Beatles tour I spent an enlightening and entertaining afternoon at Speaker’s Corner. On Sundays, any individual can come to a corner of Hyde Park and speak his or her mind on any subject without threat from authorities. Both Karl Marx and George Orwell made use of this free speech landmark. Some of the speakers I saw spoke about legitimate things—the Iraq War—while some just babbled incoherently. I saw a younger man holding up signs that read “Free Hugs” and “I Am An Attention Whore. Look at Me.” I made for this man.
No one was taking the offer of the free hug, so I decided to be the first. Yes, I got a free hug from a total stranger on Speaker’s Corner in London. And it was a very nice hug. I spent the next hour talking to Phil, for that was the man’s name. I had an absolutely terrific time talking to Phil, and I honestly felt that I had a genuine conversation with him. At one point, a rather drunken old little man with missing teeth joined our conversation and said that I looked “dangerous.” He told Phil, “she looks dangerous.” I took this as a compliment. I actually had an intelligent, somewhat philosophical conversation with Phil, with some joking and flirting mixed in. He wanted my opinion, as an American, on Britain. I told him how much I loved Britain and how seeing people picnicking had restored my faith in humanity. He seemed to like my points and responded well to my comments. Talking with Phil was truly a wonderful experience and one of the high points of my time in London. I just loved the fact that I could approach a complete stranger and yet within an hour, just through friendly talking and conversing, come to a true understanding and connection. I don’t know where I could have that experience in America. I truly loved it, and I would love to talk to Phil again.
I then spent two hours watching the incredibly gorgeous sunset over Parliament. I walked and sat on the walkway on the other side of the river, listening to the Beatles while the sun slowly sank behind the spires. I listened to the second side of Abbey Road and most of the Beatles’ 1 CD. The songs sounded simply amazing. With Parliament and Westminster Bridge as my backdrop, I don’t know if those songs ever sounded better. It felt, in a word, magical. Something in the light and the way the light moved, the pink cotton candy clouds, and the way the sky slowly deepened from blue to purple to gray to black just felt magical. I took photos all the while, documenting the changing contrast of the towers against the fire-lit sky. I tried to recreate the look of that painting by Monet.
And so romantic! I thought longingly of a certain someone and wished he could be there with me. I thought about walking across the bridge with him watching the sun set. I took a photo for a French couple and wished it was him and I there. I was wearing a black overcoat over a pair of shorts, and I felt so stylish and sexy, with the breeze blowing up the edges of my belted overcoat. Standing on the bridge in my sexy outfit, I felt like a model in a photoshoot or an actress in a movie. I felt, in a word, like a star. With the twinkling lights and pink clouds, I felt glamorous and romantic enough for magazines and movies. It may just be the most glamorous and sexy I’ve ever felt.
When the sun’s light dies down enough, Parliament becomes lighted from beneath—somewhere down around its base, lights come up to illuminate it from below. And this is just as beautiful as when the sunset lights it from behind. I do believe that it must be the most beautiful urban skyline I’ve ever seen. I am so glad I took the time to watch this gorgeous sunset. It made me very, very happy.

Waterloo Sunset

2009-04-25T18:05:00.000-07:00

Some more recollections of what I did exactly one year ago, in 2008, in London.

April 24
If I had to pick the quintessential London song, I would have to say the Kinks’ “Waterloo Sunset.” It became kind of my anthem during my London trip. Part of the lyrics is a literal ode to London life—Terry and Julie meet every Friday in Waterloo Station (it’s both an Underground Station and a regular rail station. It’s incredibly busy). On a more general level, the lyrics tell of how one can be “alone” in the city but never feel alone or afraid: “But I don’t need no friends/ As long as I gaze on Waterloo sunset/ I am in paradise.” I felt exactly like that in London. I was in paradise and never felt alone. It is truly a wonderful song.
That day in London I took the opportunity to take a bus over Waterloo Bridge to Waterloo Station and listen to the song all the way. It was, for once in London, a cloudy day. I started off ready to explore a certain area around the river. I got off the Tube at Embankment station, when it began to rain. I ducked into a café for lunch (sausages and mash). It was still raining, so I found a bus to take me over the river to Waterloo Station.
The station was absolutely teeming with people going every which way, catching trains to other parts of London or other parts of England. Until a few years ago, they could also go to different parts of Europe—the Chunnel came and left from Waterloo, another example of the British sticking it to the French. It was truly incredibly busy, but it didn’t have the frantic feel that Penn Station does. And I just stood and people watched and listened to the song that should be London’s anthem. I watched people and wondered where they were going or coming from. You know those slow-motion circumference shots used a lot in music videos? (Like Madonna’s “Ray of Light.”) I felt a lot like that. I turned slowly around and felt that the rest of the world turned much, much faster. I had slowed down my own life and so I could better appreciate the speed of everyone else’s lives.
I then found my way to the Imperial War Museum and got to experience both a WWI trench and a WWII air raid. London provides many world-class museums completely free to the public, including the War Museum, the British Museum, and the Tate Museums. I then made my way to the National Theatre complex on the South Bank of the Thames, which looks like a monstrosity of concrete from the outside but houses an unparalleled series of theatrical venues.

April 25
Sometimes I actually had to do stuff for class in London. That day I had to go to the Victoria and Albert Museum to see an exhibit with the rest of the class. The V&A, as it is known ‘round London, is a great museum if you like furniture and wallpaper and drawer handles. I do not happen to like any of these things. London has a museum for whatever fits your fancy. However, they tend to be quite maze-like. You can get quite lost in these museums, although not in a good way. I had been going along extremely well for four whole days without getting frustrated or mad. At that point, four days without a trace of anxiety looked like a record for me (soon to be surpassed by my next idyllic week in London). I got lost in the museum and became frustrated. Eventually I escaped and made my way to the National Theater complex again. On the way, I passed by the Royal Festival Hall. I peeked in and found that the program for that night included the Elgar Cello Concerto. I happen to love, love, love the Elgar and I play it very well, if I do say so myself. Just another example of the flowers and fruits of English culture!

April 26
As it was Saturday, I had the entire day to myself, free from the constraints of class. I decided to go to one of my favorite places in the world: Westminster Abbey. On my first trip to London, Westminster Abbey had simply blown me away and bowled me over. I simply could not believe how much history and beauty existed packed into tiny corners in the Abbey. Every inch of stone and floor tells a story—some sad, some triumphant, some incredibly important to the world. Both Elizabeth I and Geoffrey Chaucer are entombed in the abbey.
I can hardly explain Westminster Abbey to someone who has never walked through it. The walls have inlays of carved monuments to people long dead, who may have had importance in some far-gone century. Antechambers extend off the main paths, holding relics, beautifully carved stone and gold statutes, and sarcophagi of kings and queens. Coats of arms emblazon the choir stalls. The Chair of Edward, the official throne of Britain, stands roped off, and the humble wooden chair stands in marked contrast to the explosion of ornamental excess around it. All British monarchs have their coronation in Westminster Abbey, and as I approached the chair, I tried to walk regally, my head held high, and imagining myself as a queen approaching her crowning.
You could spend days, literally days, in Westminster Abbey and not discover all its wonders. The Abbey produces in me a sense of awe at the weight of history. We often study history from a distance, but in the Abbey you can literally see history stretching out right before your eyes in stone, glass, and wood. The actual stone contributes to my feeling of awe. I rubbed my hands many times on the cold, hard stone. The flagstones on the floor actually have troughs worn into them, which makes one think about how many feet have trod them. Despite the incredible crowd of international visitors (I like to play guess-the-language at places like these), I tried to imagine myself in the 16th century walking the hard stones in service of god and country. I did this particularly well in the cloisters. I’ve never been a religious person, of course, but walking through those sunny cloisters made me feel that in such an awe-inspiring place drenched in significance, I would enjoy religion and faith.
I don’t know how else to describe what makes the place so awesome and awe-inspiring. Maybe it defies explanation—something within the high, vaulted ceilings seems to speak to the infinite. In these times of materialism and instant gratification, of television and the Internet, Westminster Abbey harkens back to a time of God and beauty and truth. Some of that presence still lingers. In a world of concrete and aluminum, seeing miles of marble makes me pause. You get the feeling that unlike so many things today, Westminster Abbey was built to last—to endure. The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier still has fresh flowers on it, a testament to a time in which wars actually meant something.
My absolute favorite place in Westminster Abbey is, of course, Poet’s Corner. Poets have stones in the floor or busts placed in alcoves. William Wordsworth looks at you from one ledge, while William Blake looks up at you from the floor. The presence of Poet’s Corner suggests that in England, poets stand right alongside kings—that words have the ultimate power and deserve a sacred space in our places of worship. I support that notion 100%. Where else in the world celebrates poets so visibly? Here I actually took off my shoes and stood barefoot on T.S. Eliot and Percy Shelley, trying to absorb some of their energy and talent. My favorite stone belongs to Dylan Thomas. Under my feet I could feel the etched lines of the two best lines of his poetry: “Time held me green and dying/ Though I sang in my chains like the sea.”
Westminster Abbey happens look just as beautiful on the outside as it does on the inside. I examined the beautiful stones and spires, took many pictures, and then walked past Parliament (the Abbey and Parliament are right across the street from one another). I then wandered over to Buckingham Palace, where I saw some more ridiculously beautiful tulips and the outrageously over-the-top monument to Queen Victoria, where I listened to the Kinks’ amazing song, “Victoria.” It really should be the national anthem, with its updated, pro-Empire happiness.
Not contented yet with images of the Empire, I made my way to Wellington Arch. An iron statue of Victory stands atop the Arch, a reminder of the glory of the Empire. Westminster Abbey, Parliament, Buckingham Palace, Victoria, and Wellington all made me feel extremely patriotic for Britain. I’ve always considered myself an honorary Brit, and I for one do not think that the British should have to constantly apologize for the fact that for a while there, they were simply better than every other country on the planet. Sure, Britain has given the world some very unfortunate things. But Britain has also given the world some very, very good things. They should not have to apologize for doing what every country wants to do: rule the world. So all in all, a very patriotic day that made me very aware of history.

Good Day Sunshine

2009-04-21T18:42:00.000-07:00

An account of my first few days in London, one year ago.

April 20
On my first day in London, exactly a year ago, I had some first day jitters. I learned two important things that any committed traveler must know. First of all, a full stomach can make all the difference. You cannot be an effective sightseer and you cannot blend into the crowds of a huge city on an empty stomach. As I tend to do, I let my hunger get the better of me. But once I had the first of many meals of yummy, fresh Pret-a-Manger sandwiches (they come in adorable triangular cardboard packages), I felt much better. I would come to rely upon the Pret-a-Manger chain quite a bit. They had a huge variety of wonderful English sandwiches. I tell you, I ate more bread in London than I ever have in my life, but all the walking and Tube stairs worked off all the carbs.
The second lesson: when in doubt, just get on a bus. I had lost my bearings and orientations and was feeling overwhelmed and frustrated again, so when I spotted a bus that said “Trafalgar Square” and “Parliament,” I just got on. Sitting on the upper deck of a wonderful old red Routemaster, I made my own bus tour. I got off at Trafalgar Square and spent some happy time with Admiral Nelson. I then got back on the bus and went past Parliament and Westminster Abbey. I then went up to Piccadilly Circus and walked around Piccadilly, which is one of the biggest roundabouts in all of London. I went into a very good bookstore that turned out to be the Queen’s (where she gets all her books). I then popped into Fortnum and Mason’s, which is the most wonderful grocery store in London (both the Queen and James Bond shop there). It has the most beautifully packaged cookies, chocolates, candies, teas, jams, etc. Fortnum and Mason’s really makes one want to be a queen, or at least a princess.

April 21
When many people think of London, they think of dreary, gray, rainy days. But for the month that I spent there, the city very kindly blessed me with absolutely gorgeous weather. I pulled out my brolley (umbrella) only a handful of times. I had duly packed my wool overcoat, but I ended spending most days in shorts and sandals. On my second day in London, I took advantage of an absolutely perfect spring day to take a walk in the park. But London parks are no ordinary parks—wide lawns of impossibly green grass give way to carefully manicured flower beds and fabulous avenues of trees. London’s parks also teem with statutes, playgrounds, and other hidden treasures. You can wander for hours and keep finding new flowers to smell.
I started off through Hyde Park and stopped briefly in front of Kensington Palace, where Queen Victoria lived. I found there the Flower Walk, an absolute explosion of tulips in every conceivable color. I happen to love tulips—they are my favorite flower. And this little walled off garden, complete with fountain, had tulips set out in the most beautiful combinations. I walked around and around, viewing them from different angles.
Now, I am a New Mexico girl at heart, and I do love the desert landscape. But something in me just goes wild at green things—at grass so thick and soft that you can walk barefoot through it; at huge bushes laden with flowers growing wild; at trees that envelop you with a canopy of rustling leaves. London’s rain might get old during the dreary winter months, but the result of that rain is a profusion of green life. The verdant London parks left me in awe. And the delicious smell of flowers just came wafting by itself. Every time even a slight breeze blew, the smell of the flowers would come over me. And the smell of fresh cut grass!
Walking through Hyde Park, I suddenly came upon the Albert Memorial, a gigantic gleaming tower of gold and ivory, complete with a life-size gold replica of Prince Albert himself. I had no idea it was there, but in London you can often find amazing pieces of beauty by sheer chance.
Whenever the weather turns fine in London, everybody pours out into the park for picnics. Honestly, seeing so many people out having picnics on the lawn, children playing soccer, and elderly gentlemen out with their sketch pads and small dogs truly restored my faith in humanity. It made me feel so warm and happy inside to see so many ordinary people take notice of a beautiful day and get outside to enjoy it. It seems that at the slightest ray of sunshine, out come the ice cream carts and the lawn chairs. Seeing this outpouring of enthusiasm and good, old-fashioned fun made me feel truly happy and made me feel that amid all the cynicism in the world, Londoners still have a place in their hearts for romance, nostalgia, and innocence.
In St. James’ Park, amid even more astoundingly beautiful tulips, I saw someone special enjoying the weather: Sting. He was out with his wife Trudy, walking the cobblestoned paths just like any other Londoner. I passed right by Sting on the path. I made eye contact with Trudy. But of all the rock stars I could see! I don’t even particularly like the Police! I could have picked 25 rock stars I would have rather seen. But still, it was the first celebrity I had ever really seen. I let him go on his way and soon enough he and Trudy were laying in the lovely grass.
On days like these, I literally stopped and smelled the flowers. I have a special place in my heart for flowers and trees, and London let me enjoy them so much.

London Calling

2009-04-18T14:37:00.000-07:00

Exactly one year ago today, I embarked upon a journey that became the best month of my life. I stepped on a plane bound for London, and I got to spend a glorious month in the most amazing city in the world. I’ve had individual life moments that surpassed my London experience, but for day-to-day, constant deep contentment and happiness, nothing can beat that month. I’ve decided to take this opportunity to look back at what was truly a life-changing experience and share it on this forum. I kept a pretty extensive journal, and while I won’t reproduce it word-for-word here, I will look back through my journals and hundreds of photographs to reproduce the best moments.
Anyone who has spent more than five minutes with me knows that I am a diehard Anglophile. Although my German-Irish background should make me hate England, parts of the English culture have always called to me. I say parts: while I would in a split second transport myself to 1960s Swinging London, I think the Industrial Revolution was a big mistake. Many of my favorite things come from England: the Beatles, James Bond, Lord of the Rings, the Who, sandwiches, Wordsworth, iambic pentameter, etc. For a long time, I had a dream of living or spending significant amounts of time in England. I always felt like an honorary Brit. London had always called to me, and as a Beatlemaniac I knew I had to make the pilgrimage to Liverpool at sometime in my life. When I was 16 I spent a week in London, and ever since then some mysterious force had pulled me back to that enchanted island.
I knew that Colorado College offered a month-long theater class in London, but I still waffled at the thought. Ever the responsible one, I worried about abandoning the orchestra or spending too much money. And then along came Jeopardy! On the third day of Jeopardy, my final Jeopardy category was “Beatles Songs.” I bet it all and came up with the correct answer: “Penny Lane.” I said to myself, “Now you really have to go to Liverpool and pay homage to Penny Lane.” (Penny Lane is a street in Liverpool.) I took it as a sign that the universe wanted me to go to Liverpool. And if I was going to go all the way to Liverpool, why not spend a month in London on the way there? I waffled no longer. I now had a definitive reason to go to England, not to mention the financial freedom that Jeopardy had afforded me.
While I had dreamed and fantasized about London and what an amazing time I could have there, it surpassed every expectation I had. Of course, I got to experience London under the best possible circumstances. While officially I was there for academic reasons, the academics involved taking in London’s unmatched theatre scene. We saw a play every night and talked about it for two hours the next morning. Outside of that, I was completely free to do what I wanted. I sincerely wish that every person gets an opportunity in their lives to have the kind of freedom I had. I had no homework, so for the first time in about ten years, I didn’t have the constant worry of homework and grades over my head. I also had no worries about the future. I had sent in my application for law school and I knew I would not hear back until I got home. And because I was in a foreign country, I couldn’t do such things as look for jobs.
Not only did I get to take a vacation physically, but I took a vacation mentally. I let myself go from all worries about the future or the past. My hair-dryer didn’t work, so I didn’t have to worry about how I looked. I walked miles and miles every day through the streets of London, so I didn’t have to worry about exercising. Instead of worrying, I stopped and smelled the flowers, both literally and figuratively. (I actually cried at the sight of fields and fields of multi-colored tulips.) I had the amazing luxury of time—time to slow down and time to let the city take me wherever it did. I mean, of course I had plans of what I wanted to see. But some days I just let myself wander, watching and listening to the wonderful city. I packed in an incredible amount of sight-seeing, but I felt more relaxed than I ever have in my life. One of my favorite quotations comes from Professor Tolkien: “Not all who wander are lost.” I truly learned the significance of this quotation. I wandered, walked, and weaved my way through the streets and alleys and lanes of the busy metropolis, seeking out nooks and crannies of interest. At a corner or intersection, I took the way that looked most appealing at that one single moment in time. I spent hours upon hours strolling barefoot through the parks. I watched people, but even more so, I watched myself. I allowed myself to live in the moment. I allowed myself to enjoy every experience and let myself have fun. I allowed myself to be free.
And in all my wanderings, I never got lost, because it is impossible to get lost in London. You may get confused about your physical location, but around every corner you will find something new and interesting. I also never got lost because I felt completely at home. I’m not sure if I believe in past lives, but if I do, then I most certainly lived in England in some past life. I felt truly at home in London. I made the city my own. Although parts of London are of course quite rough, I never felt the least bit scared or insecure. I never felt afraid. Rather, I felt like I had walked these streets for my whole life. I was home.
Before I left for London, I made some promises to myself. First, I would treat the trip as an adventure. I had just gotten finished with a life-changing class on adventure narratives, so I decided to make London my own person adventure. And I did. I set out each day with my map, ready to explore and get into trouble. I never actually got into any trouble, but my adventure mindset really made the experience enjoyable. I also promised myself that I would not scrimp. I promised myself that I would not turn away from any attraction because of the price tag. Now, I didn’t go blow my Jeopardy winnings on tea at the Savoy every day, but if after some sunny hours in the park I wanted an ice cream, then I had an ice cream. I bought a quite expensive Tube (Underground) pass that gave me unlimited rides. I decided to ignore the (horrible) exchange rate and just have fun.
Besides my map, my most important accessory was my Ipod. My favorite music—the Beatles, the Who, the Kinks—took on an even greater beauty and significance when I listened to it in London. Imagine Revolver in a verdant London park, or listening to “Who are You” when actually having your hair blown back by a breeze from the Underground, or hearing “Waterloo Sunset” while actually standing in Waterloo Station. My favorite music never sounded better than it did in London.
So for the next month, I will be sharing some of my memories from last year. I took hundreds and hundreds of pictures, so I will try to pick out the best. At the end of the month, I hope you come to have just a fraction of love for London that I have for it.

The Green Light

2009-04-11T16:07:00.000-07:00

Last night I was talking to someone about The Great Gatsby and I mentioned that I had named my blog “The Green Light.” (see Welcome message at right for the relevant quote.)He then asked me a very important question that I admit had not crossed my mind—a question that leads to some very big life evaluations. I hadn’t really thought about this question because the answer has been so obvious that I never bothered to really express the answer, even to myself. “Kristina,” he said, “what is your green light?”
I’m sure you will all remember from high school English class that the “green light” is the major symbol in The Great Gatsby. Daisy Buchanan, Gatsby’s beloved, has a green light at the end of her dock on Long Island Sound. Gatsby stares at that green light and even stretches his arm out toward it. Everyone from high school students to college professors have speculated on the symbolism of the green light: Daisy herself, money and material wealth, the American Dream, Gatsby’s vision of himself. Much ink has been spilled in the battle to pin down the green light. Fitzgerald even admits that the green light is a symbol: “Possibly it had occurred to him that the colossal significance of that light had now vanished forever…It had seemed as close as a star to the moon. Now it was again a green light on a dock. His count of enchanted objects had diminished by one.” Every reader brings with him or herself a different green light. So what is mine?
I firmly believe that The Great Gatsby IS the Great American Novel and simply one of the best things ever written by anybody. But I think I have a different reason for my attachment to this novel than many people. I do absolutely love the language. The novel has passages that really do bring me to tears with their achingly poetic beauty. I’ve described the style of The Great Gatsby as similar to the trademark style of the age from which the novel came: Jazz. Furthermore, The Great Gatsby offers so much juicy, rich material for discussion. You can read the book so many different ways and pull so many different issues out of it. I must have read it at least five times, yet it still amazes me.
But I have a more personal reason for loving The Great Gatsby. I love Gatsby himself. I identify so strongly with Gatsby and see so much of myself in him. And I just love what he represents: “There was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life…It was an extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic readiness.” When I read and discuss this book in a class setting, the reactions of other students always shock me. So many people find Gatsby himself silly, stupid, and as narrator Nick admits, appallingly sentimental. I just cannot see that. To me, Gatsby is a hero because he believes in hope, romance, beauty, dreams, and above all, love. He believes that if he just loves Daisy enough, the world will all work out. I have been guilty of that belief myself.
I’ll just go ahead and admit it now—one of my green lights is, just like in Gatsby, a specific person. I read the passages in which Gatsby and Daisy meet for the first time in five years with personal experience of exactly the same event. I have had moments of being “consumed with wonder at [his] presence.” But unlike Daisy, my green light has never “tumbled short of [my] dreams.” In fact, Gatsby has been somewhat of a self-help book for me in that it has warned me not to do with my green light what Gatsby did with Daisy. I know that I cannot “commit [myself] to the following of a grail.” Gatsby “paid a high price for living too long with a single dream.” And I know that I cannot do that. But I read Gatsby with personal experience of feeling about someone the same way that Gatsby feels about Daisy.
On a bigger level, then, my green light is love and hope. My green light represents a vision of the world that has a place for such Romantic people as Jay Gatsby. I do believe that if we dream enough, love enough, and hope enough, we can make an “orgastic future” of any kind we want. The 1920s were a deeply cynical time, but Gatsby’s gift for hope and romantic readiness shines through that time. Gatsby is an icon of the 1920s, but he actually does not fit in with the feelings of that time. I think we are living in a pretty cynical time right now, but I try to keep the romantic readiness alive, partially by believing in characters like Jay Gatsby. Maybe you will think me appallingly sentimental. But I recall the title I once gave to a paper I wrote on Gatsby’s dreaming ways: “You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one.” I hope that someday, you’ll join us.

Badassness

2009-04-08T18:09:00.000-07:00

Three days ago, on Sunday evening, I went to the audition for a local production of Twelve Angry Men. Obviously, I am not a man. I went partially to make a legitimate protest about a legal/theatrical issue, but I went more so to feel like a badass. See, I think that we should all try to occasionally do things that make us feel like badasses. What does badass-ness feel like? Well, it feels like you have just taken charge of the world, that you have done something to make people take notice and say, “Who is THAT?” A badass doesn’t follow rules—he makes his own rules.
I’ve alluded to my desire to take part in some kind of big protest/event/movement type thing. I definitely will devote an entire post at some point to the fact that if I had lived during the 1960s, I would have been on the front lines protesting. I have a very strong urge to Stand Up! for something or do Something for some Cause. I’m reminded of a line from Animal House: “I think that this situation absolutely requires a really futile and stupid gesture be done on somebody's part.” Now, I don’t want to do a futile and stupid gesture, but I have a similar kind of feeling as Otter does. The situation of Twelve Angry Men required somebody to make some kind of gesture. And given that I haven’t had many other opportunities to make a protest, I decided to turn this into my own personal mission.
Unfortunately, my audition-crashing was rather anticlimactic and it didn’t quite make me feel like a badass. I had sent a letter to the theater (see the post “One Angry Actress” below) urging that the producers/directors change the production to include women. Upon arriving at the audition, I discovered that they had never received my letter. Strike one against my badass-ness, because I could not say in an outraged manner, “You didn’t even have the dignity or courtesy to reply to my letter so I had to show up here in person in protest!” I took my seat among a crowd of the 10 or so silver-haired old men and the three or four young guys. The director walked in, looked around counting, and announced, “Well, 15 men and one lady.”
But sadly, that was basically the last comment about my status as a non-man. I admit that I had envisioned some man asking me, “Why are you here?” and then I would launch into a spiel about women’s rights and the judicial system and whatnot. But no one really addressed it. Strike two against me, because apparently protests such as these are old hat and unimpressive in this day and age.
The director did let me read, and honestly, I was probably more masculine than half of the guys there. I had just the right kind of righteous indignation that the play requires. If gender had not been a factor, I think my audition would have gotten me a part. At the end of the audition, I went up to the director and said, “Thanks for letting me play.” He honestly didn’t seem too interested and said something about sticking with the all-men production. Strike three against my desire for a dramatic confrontation.
I do legitimately care about the legal/gender issues of the composition of juries. I do firmly believe that it is a travesty that in the 1950s women were still not on juries. I do care about gender equality, and as a young woman who has profited and benefited from decades of feminist protest, I feel it is my duty to keep the issue on everyone’s minds, albeit in a non-man-hating, non-pushy, non-femi-Nazi way. However, I did have other motives in crashing the audition. I also legitimately wanted a part in a very famous play at one of Albuquerque’s more respected community theaters (the Adobe Theater). The play has some great material and some great parts, and I hunger after the kind of hard-hitting lines that this play offers.
But beyond those motives, I wanted to have a badass moment. In the past year or so, I have become much more outgoing and outspoken. I have been confronting my shyness in a systematic way and have been focusing on becoming a dynamic individual. I decided that this would be a good test for me. Could I really go in and tell a stranger that, godammit, I want something and I want it now!? I would say that the jury has not come in on that question yet (I made a joke, you see?). I wanted to storm in to the audition and raise a holler and a stink. But it didn’t quite work, mostly because I didn’t get the response from the director, stage manager, and other actors that I needed. A protest needs something against which to protest, and I did not get that on this one.
But I will keep looking for opportunities to act like—no—be a badass. Because one does not act like a badass. One simply is a badass. I feel most like a badass when I wear my Who jacket. I promise I will devote an entire column to my Who jacket (I need someone to take a picture of me in it) at some point in the future. Rock and roll makes me feel like a badass. Climbing mountains makes me feel like a badass.
So a question for all you readers: What makes you feel like a badass? When have you felt like a badass? Do you actively seek out opportunities to be a badass? I’d like to issue a challenge to everyone out there: break some rules, do something crazy or futile, or demand something you really want. In short, go out there and be a badass.

Book Review: The Road

2009-04-04T19:36:00.000-07:00

This is the way the world ends.
Not with a bang but a whimper.
--“The Hollow Men” by T.S. Eliot

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
--“Fire and Ice” by Robert Frost

“What’s the bravest thing you ever did?”
… “Getting up this morning,” he said.
--From The Road by Cormac McCarthy

A few days ago I had occasion to use the colloquial phrase, “It’s not the end of the world.” And after reading Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, I can say that the end of the world will really be much, much, much worse. The Road is a brilliant and harrowing novel that has just a tiny ray of hope that makes the journey worth it. While I do not think it is Cormac’s best, if you can make it on The Road, you most certainly should. It is devastating on both a personal and a global level.
The Road follows the journey of an unnamed man and his son through a post-apocalyptic wasteland. We never learn the exact cause of the apocalypse, but it looks to me like nuclear holocaust (fire) has brought on a nuclear winter (ice). What little plot the book has tells the story of the man and boy searching desperately for food and warmth through the dead wasteland. They also must evade the “bad guys” while keeping hope alive that they will find some other “good guys.” We don’t get a clear idea of how many other people still remain alive, but we do get some very, very disturbing glimpses of how some of the bad guys stay alive (cannibalism) and how society has completely collapsed (slaves).
One week after finishing The Road, I get two very visceral feelings when I think about it: hunger and cold. McCarthy does an absolutely brilliant job of making sure that the cold literally gets into your skin. He doesn’t simply tell you about the coldness. He makes you feel it by mentioning it over and over. When reading it, I began to notice that I couldn’t wait for the pages when the man and his son would get to build a fire. And as the cold seeps into your very bones, the cold may also start getting into your heart as well. The hunger happens in much the same way. So much of the book is concerned with finding food that you become much more aware of the feelings in your stomach. I have never read any piece of writing that made me so thankful to have access to food whenever I want it.
The brilliance of The Road is how the journey of the reader mirrors the journey of the father and son. As the disturbing images pile up and the cold takes hold of you, you may find yourself wishing that it (the book at least) would just all end. As a reader, you may start thinking, “How can I preserve any hope for the future in a landscape this bleak?” By the middle of the book, I was seriously depressed, but I knew that, as a reader, I had to make it through to the inevitable end. Amid all the depression, a few small moments of kindness and light kept my reader spirits up. And these are the very same feelings that the man and his son go through. They speak often of carrying “the fire,” but at times their spirits flag. The man looks often at the gun he constantly carries and worries about saving two bullets. The man knows that he must make it through to the inevitable end and preserve hope for his son. And sometimes a simple can of pears or a new found blanket will make the world seem just a little bit more liveable.
The Road is truly a journey for both the reader and the characters, with the major emotional catharsis coming in the last fifteen pages. I saw it coming, and still I wept as 250 pages of pent-up emotion suddenly poured out in one completely devastating passage.
The book that, for me, provides the most apt comparison to The Road is The Giver by Lois Lowry, and what provides the comparison is the color palate. The landscape of The Road is one of ash, dead trees, sunless skies, and decaying fields. The overriding image I have of the book is simply gray. Everything is gray, colorless and lifeless. The grayness and lifelessness actually depressed me more than anything else in the book. It really made me go outside and appreciate the color of the world. The Giver also is a colorless world, although for very different reasons (that post-apocalyptic society has eliminated racism by eliminating all colors). The ends of the two books also share similarity in their coldness and ambiguous hope.
And surprisingly, it also reminded me of Lord of the Rings. Apparently, nuclear winter will look an awful lot like Mordor, and the last surviving “good guys” will look a lot like two little hobbits carrying a sacred fire, out alone in the wild world. Mordor is a landscape of fire and ash and poisonous smoke, and the only thing that gets Frodo and Sam across that perilous landscape is their love for each other. Likewise, the only thing that keeps the man and his son going on the road is their love for each other. And like the most brilliant, poignant moments of Lord of the Rings, The Road challenges us to find hope where no hope remains, not in the world at large, but in each other.
The only other comparison I can make is actually to Holocaust media. At times The Road is as hard to read as Holocaust accounts, and indeed, the book has images more accustomed to Holocaust media: famished people on the run and even more disturbingly, burned corpses on the side of the road and corpses inside a semi-truck. But unlike so much Holocaust media, The Road never preaches. We never know the exact nature of the catastrophe that befell the world, so we cannot place any blame on anyone.
Even though the true story of The Road is the man and his son, the book has a few very subtle messages about society at large. British environmentalist George Monbiot wrote, "It could be the most important environmental book ever. It is a thought experiment that imagines a world without a biosphere, and shows that everything we value depends on the ecosystem." The Road never announces itself as an environmentally conscious work, but that reading is inevitable. In many tales of survival, such as Robinson Crusoe, the human protagonist forges a relationship with the natural world. Nature provides that which civilization no longer does. The Road is a whole new kind of survival tale because the natural world cannot provide anything. The man and his son cannot go back to living off the land because the land is dead. They rely on canned food and plastic raincoats to survive. Humans can always survive even without civilization. This book asks an entirely new question: how can humans survive both without civilization and without nature? Obviously they cannot, which leads the reader to imagine, quite truly, the end of the world.
I won’t lie—The Road is very, very depressing. But if you can get beyond the depression you will find a brilliant novel that will affect you to your core and truly make you think differently about the world.

Why I Hate Sex and the City

2009-04-04T18:16:00.000-07:00

The other day my sister was attempting to give me some worldly advice and she started referencing, as she always does, Sex and the City. My brother-in-law and I instantly started groaning. I am definitely in the minority of women in that I find Sex and the City objectionable and harmful, not to mention poorly written.
My sister always insists that “it’s only a fantasy.” I definitely see that it is a fantasy, but I do not know of any other fantasies that have such influence over the everyday actions of millions of people. As I’ve written before, Star Wars is a fantasy, but we don’t get self-help books and relationship advice books with titles like, “May the Force be With You,” whereas we do have the Sex and the City spawned major relationship advice book He’s Just Not That Into You. The danger of Sex and the City is that a clearly fantastical premise has taken up in women’s brains as a realistic portrait of the world. Fantasy is by definition not reality, yet that message has gotten lost in translation as women seek to define their lives according to Carrie Bradshaw. You can take Sex and the City themed tours of New York City, and there we can see clearly how fantasy and reality have become confused. You take a tour of a real city inhabited by real people by day, but inhabited by TV-night by egregiously over-the-top caricatures of fantastical proportions.
Let me talk about those caricatures. For all the supposedly feminist overtones of Sex and the City, it actually does a disfavor to women by holding to two stereotypical, one-dimensional views of women, as embodied by Charlotte and Samantha: the Madonna and the whore, respectively. Samantha and Charlotte are of course at opposite ends of the femininity spectrum, but they still are frustratingly narrowly defined. Samantha wants only sex, sex, sex, and doesn’t care about love. Charlotte just wants her upper-West-Side townhouse, her perfect husband, and her Ralph Lauren cocktail dresses. As I see it, the major triumph of feminism was that women could be many different things at once: professionals, mothers, athletes, nurturers, etc. Feminism says that women can be both the Madonna and the whore—they can be mothers but still use sex for power and pleasure. The writers of Sex and the City draw Samantha and Charlotte in such thin lines—neither of seem to ever grow or change much or deviate from their carefully defined character boxes.
Miranda, on the other hand, is refreshingly three-dimensional. She actually has to deal with playing the multiple roles of the modern women: the professional, the mother, the sexpot, the intellectual. She has brains, a high-powered job, and her own money, but those things come into conflict with her femininity, sexual identity, and relationships with men. Getting Miranda pregnant was the only truly daring, relevant storyline on the show, because it actually addressed the challenges of the 21st century woman.
And Carrie? Or, as my brother-in-law calls her, The Horse? The thing that bothers me about Carrie is how, for all her supposed quirkiness and supposed sexual liberation, she is actually quite conservative. She fears kissing a girl when playing spin-the-bottle and rarely, if ever, takes the initiative to ask a guy out. While she seems to have everything under control in her personal life, she has no idea about her finances. And frankly, I question her supposed writing ability. I can’t help but wonder, can you really make an entire column out of rhetorical questions?
The biggest puzzler comes when you compare what men think of Carrie/Sarah Jessica Parker and what happens on the show. The show would have us believe that men just collapse in rapture at the Manolo-clad feet of Carrie, that men just can’t get enough of her, that she is very desirable. And yet no less an authority than Maxim magazine recently named Sarah Jessica Parker the “unsexiest woman in the world.” My brother-in-law, whom I consider a very normal guy, openly calls her Horse. Women, on the other hand, love Carrie’s unorthodox looks and personal style. So what explains this disparity? I don’t have an answer for that, but I think this disparity leads to confusion for many women. If men and women have such polar opposite views of what qualifies as beautiful and desirable, then we need to, as a society, have a little confab to communicate to the other side just what we all want.
My other problem with Carrie is that she is a bit of a shrew. She nags her men, particularly Aidan. She picks over the flaws of every man she gets, but she never focuses that microscope upon herself. What if Carrie examined her own flaws with the same intensity with which she dissected Mr. Big’s or Aidan’s or Berger’s? Would her narcissism and materialism shock her? Carrie criticized Mr. Big so much for his self-involvement, but never noticed that she herself is one of the most self-involved people ever. How can she pretend to be such an astute observer of human nature when she never analyzes her own (often self-destructive) behavior?
And finally, the materialism really gets to me. The fashion on this show adds greatly to its fantasy. Who would really dress like Carrie? And who could really afford to? The show never explains how Carrie can afford to buy so many shoes, eat at so many trendy restaurants, and drink so many overpriced Cosmopolitans at overpriced bars on a surely measly writer’s salary. This is another place where the fantasy interferes dangerously with reality. Women all over America suddenly think that they need Manolo Blahnik shoes and Chanel blazers and giant flower pins. One pair of Manolo Blahniks will set you back at least $700 (at Neiman Marcus). And Carrie of course has hundreds of pairs of shoes. Not only is this materialism just plain bad in itself, but it sets a horrible example for anyone who watches the show and buys (literally) into its lifestyle. Yes, again, it’s fantasy, but I would call it “aspirational fantasy.” Women aspire to live the Carrie fantasy lifestyle. But that aspiration actually costs something.
So unlike many of my 20-something sisters, I do not take Carrie Bradshaw as one of my examples to live by. I do occasionally watch some of the TV show, and my sister did drag me along to the movie on opening night. But I watch it with an analytical eye. I of course accept full responsibility for indulging in fantasy movies/books of my own. And certainly I will at some point write about how Lord of the Rings ruined my life, albeit ruined in a very positive and romantic way. Sex and the City’s fantasy does not appeal to me because it has negative repercussions in the real world.

Book Review: Blood Meridian

2009-03-28T12:48:00.000-07:00

“This is a hungry country.”
“Not again in all the world’s turning will there be terrains so wild and barbarous to try whether the stuff of creation may be shaped to man’s will or whether his own heart is not another kind of clay.”
“Death seemed the most prevalent feature of the landscape.”
These quotations do not describe hell or some fantasy, other-planetary world. They describe the American West as seen through the visionary, brilliant eye of Cormac McCarthy in the novel Blood Meridian, or The Evening Redness in the West. I just finished my second trip through this epic, blood-soaked realm and I recommend that every person take a trip through McCarthy’s version of the Mexican borderlands of the 1850s.
Blood Meridian is simultaneously awe-inspiring and absolutely despicable. What little actual plot it has tells the story of The Kid (we never learn his name) and his adventures in the American southwest just after the Mexican-American War. He joins up with the infamous Glanton Gang. The gang moves through the desert killing and scalping anyone they find—Indians, Mexicans, white settlers, they do not discriminate. You may not think that violence in a book can affect you, but the violence in this book will shock you. McCarthy pulls no punches in describing the viscera that soaks the desert of the American West, but the actual description of the depravity is not the most shocking thing. Rather, the utterly senseless nature of the violence truly shocks. The killing and scalping and ritual blood-letting simply do not ever let up. The slaughters and shootings keep coming, and perhaps the greatest shock comes when you reach the middle of the book and you realize that you have become de-sensitized to the violence—that you pass over every mention of the word blood and your eyes slide over the descriptions of wounds and scalped, burned bodies. McCarthy does an absolutely brilliant job of showing, rather than simply telling, his readers of their capacity to accept and encourage the violence that lurks within every human being’s heart.
Speaking of hearts, I find Heart of Darkness to be the most apt comparison to Blood Meridian. McCarthy writes, “They wanted to know from me if you were always crazy, said the judge. They said it was the country. The country turned them out.” Heart of Darkness suggests that a horrific world will turn even the brightest of men into horrors themselves. Blood Meridian likewise suggests that something in the country—the alien, desert landscape—turns ordinary men into terrors and demons. We all have somewhere within us the possibility of evil beyond our imagination. Who knows what we are truly capable of when we must bring a wild, newborn country under our dominion? Conrad expressed this latent capability through the image of darkness. McCarthy expresses it through the color red—the book’s two major images are actual physical blood and the amazing southwest sunsets that make the land itself bleed.
When I first read the novel, I found myself underlining vast swaths of text—whole paragraphs that simply floored me with their powerful, haunting lyricism. McCarthy turns a real landscape into a dreamy, surreal world. The land itself becomes a character with its own whims and fancies. McCarthy really has a poet’s sensibilities and he writes with an ear for imagery, epic, and poetry that makes Blood Meridian resemble Paradise Lost and The Iliad in style. While you may find the substance despicable, the style will truly destroy you with its, shiver-up-the-spine-inducing, awe-inspiring beauty.
Epic in style, Blood Meridian is also epic in substance. Like The Aeneid tells the story of the founding of Rome, McCarthy’s masterpiece tells the story of the founding of America. This is not the founding you learned about in elementary school. This re-telling shatters the myth of the American West—the myth that has good, honest, hard-working folks scraping a living out of the hard earth. McCarthy tells us that the American West of cowboys-and-Indians and homesteads and wagon trails is simply a fairy tale told to comfort the souls of 20th century America. The real West is a war zone. The real settlers were criminals and murderers and thieves—men with no moral compass, no God, and no conscience. Instead they had steel spines and blood of ice. Only men like Glanton could face the wide open plains, deserts, and mountains and survive. America was not founded by men in wigs in a hall in Philadelphia in 1776. The real America, according to Cormac, only emerged through the letting of rivers of blood by men who constantly fled civilization, who knew no other way of living than constant riding through hostile territories.
Blood Meridian does not appear on the Modern Library Association’s list of the best novels of the 20th century. And I certainly understand how the old fogies of the modern literary establishment would be disgusted by Cormac McCarthy. The author himself is a powerful rebel—he never gives interviews and does not kowtow to the literary powers-that-be. He lives in Tesuque, New Mexico and writes the kind of revisionist Westerns that John Ford or Clint Eastwood would scarcely recognize. A Google search doesn’t bring up much. Blood Meridian is certainly not an easy book to read, but I believe that everyone should try to read it. We need to know this story. We need to know the history of our country, whether that history paints our ancestors in a favorable light or not.
Blood Meridian makes me want to write papers. I’ve even thought that if I ever go for a Ph.D. in literature I might just become a Cormac McCarthy specialist. The character of Judge Holden particularly interests me. I have a theory that the Judge is either the Devil or God. I also would love to explore further the relationship between this novel, Heart of Darkness, and The Wasteland. The book offers up so much interesting material to digest and analyze. Tomorrow I will start reading McCarthy’s Pulitzer winning The Road. Tonight I will watch the evening redness in the west.

The Paradox of Experience

2009-03-22T16:36:00.001-07:00

Today I want to talk about a peculiar phenomenon of the modern world, which I call the “paradox of experience.” Basically, as I identify it, it goes something like this: To get a job (or a role), you need experience, but to get experience, you need a job (or a role). As someone who has very little job experience, this phenomenon distresses me very much. Not only is it not good for me personally, I do not think the obsession with experience is good for anyone.
The experience paradox basically prevents prospective employers or boyfriends from taking chances. Taking chances on people breeds innovation and new ideas and breakthroughs. Taking chances forces us to consider new possibilities and challenge the status quo of both ourselves and the world. What if Ferdinand and Isabella had not taken a chance on an inexperienced, although ambitious, young sailor named Columbus? What if Albert Broccoli had not taken a chance on Sean Connery, who had little acting experience but abundant potential? Experience blinds people to potential. And in my opinion, the most important thing we should recognize in potential employees or partners is potential—potential to grow and change.
When I judge people (I admit that I judge people), I do not necessarily look at where they came from or where they end up. What really impresses me is growth—I want to see how far you’ve come and if you want to go further. Focusing on experience translates into a focus on the past—what have you been—instead of on the future—what you can become. While I do not believe in trying to overly change people, I do believe that every single individual has the capacity for positive growth and that we should all try to achieve that growth.
Last year I auditioned for Closer; I had a pitifully short list of acting experience. And at the time I auditioned, no one would have said that I could play a stripper. And yet the director took a chance on me; she saw some potential—some hint or glimmer of a capacity just below the surface waiting to come out. And I successfully transformed myself. I became something totally different that no one could have told from my experience. I thank that director so much for taking that chance on me, for giving me the break I needed to prove to the world that I could become someone and something completely different.
The experience paradox favors a less risky, more secure world view. When you take a chance on someone, you do just that: play with chance. The person might fail, or that person might also explode with ability and creativity that had just waited for someone to tap into it. You have to take a risk. When experience rules the day, however, no one takes any risk, and while they may avoid any potential failures or disasters, they also miss the possibility of something new and exciting and brilliant.
The experience paradox also presents a real practical problem: how do you break through into the job market or into relationships or into anything else that you want to do? Many job listings now say something like “degree plus two years of experience in the field.” In the field? How, on a purely practical level, do you get that experience in the field if no one will hire you without it? It’s a kind of Catch-22 situation. You get stuck between a rock and a hard place, between the job and the experience.
This is especially hard for a person like me, who has done extraordinarily well in school but little outside of school. It seems like education and school actually might be losing credibility right now, especially because these days anyone with a computer can get a degree without doing any actual work. Well, I did plenty of actual work in school and truly earned my degree. Why doesn’t that count for more? The trends of “everyone deserves a college education” and “everybody has the ability to obtain a college education” have, to put it frankly, dumbed down the college degree to make it relatively unimportant. Everyone these days has a degree. Not everyone has experience.
The recent election may signal a change. Barack Obama has relatively little experience, especially compared with other presidential candidates. Obama asked America to take a chance on him. He promised change—a departure from the same old same old. He urged us to look past what he had or hadn’t done and instead asked us to consider what he could do. Now, so far, I don’t think that the collective chance that America took has quite paid off. Now, we still have four years and the chance may prove the best thing we ever did. Or, we may have to pick up the pieces again in four years. But all the people who voted for Obama rejected an experienced but stuck-in-the-mud and stodgy John McCain for a young, inexperience, but ambitious go-getter.
I very much hope that employers and casting directors will take chances on people. You never know when you might give someone the big break they need. And I hope that one day I can give some deserving person with amazing potential his or her big break.

Angelina v. Jennifer

2009-03-13T18:25:00.000-07:00

Today as I talked to a guy who I am very much interested in (a couple of other people, both male and female were also present), the subject came around to what kind of girls—women—interested him. He threw out Ingrid Bergman and a few Hitchcock blondes. So I asked, “Angelina Jolie or Jennifer Aniston?” I asked that because Angelina and Jennifer exemplify two very different kinds of women. Our national obsession with the Aniston-Pitt-Jolie love triangle speaks to certain societal views about modern gender roles. And I suddenly realized today that the Angelina-Jennifer debate can teach us young, single gals a thing or two.
Angelina and Jennifer present two completely different visions of the modern woman. Jennifer is the “girl next door” and completely accessible. She appears most often in the tabloids wearing jeans and a black tank top, her skin tanned as she walks in Malibu. She has perfectly highlighted blonde hair, blue eyes, and a lithe, toned body. And does this make her beautiful? I personally do not find Jennifer Aniston at all attractive. She has a severe, oddly-angled face and thin lips. While she has certainly found success in her Hollywood career, she basically plays the same character in everything she does. She started out as Rachel, and unfortunately has not shown much capability of moving outside that kind of role. She does have good comic timing, but she simply does not disappear into a role.
Angelina, on the other hand, is the femme fatale, “other woman,” scene-stealer, crazy/beautiful bombshell, unpredictable weirdo, Oscar winner, the movie star. She is inaccessible. She holds her head regally high, her chestnut hair cascading down her back, and her full lips in a perfect pout. Something about her just screams, “Look at me!” Then there’s her history of tattoos, kissing her brother, playing mentally unhinged characters, and wearing a vial of Billy Bob Thornton’s blood. Now she has become the ultimate Earth Mother and diplomat and shows ultimate passion in both endeavors. While her career has slowed down of late, she does have an Oscar and several Golden Globes and amazed Hollywood with her ability to disappear into roles. We see her most often cavorting around exotic international destinations with a string of kids in tow.
Now, which do you choose? Brad Pitt chose Angelina, but he is perhaps the only man in the world who could affirmatively choose Angelina, rather than have Angelina choose him. I personally would go 100% for Angelina. Maybe I’m a little biased—I too have naturally full, pouty lips. And a director once said that I reminded her of Angelina in Girl, Interrupted (for which she won her Oscar). Many women agree that Angelina is beautiful, but may not like her for her status as “the other woman.”
But what I find absolutely perplexing is how many men choose Jennifer over Angelina. Don’t men find Angelina incredibly sexy and fascinating? She projects excitement, passion, adventure, and maybe even a little craziness. Jennifer projects comfort, routine, safety, and maybe even a little neediness. These differences translate into a difference in accessibility, and apparently guys crave accessibility. Modern guys are unfortunately just as or even more insecure than modern girls. Modern guys no longer have the balls to ask girls out, and so if they do take their chances, they might shoot lower in the hopes of not getting shot down. Why aim for the Superwoman (Angelina) when you have a better chance with the Friend (Jennifer)? The guy today said, “You can have a hamburger and a beer with Jennifer.” I don’t think Jennifer has eaten a hamburger in 10 years, but she does seem like a hamburger kind of gal, whereas Angelina seems like a foie gras and wine kind of woman.
Bottom line: Angelina scares men. She scares them with her undeniable talent, success, passion, intelligence, and sexiness. Angelina never shows a sign of weakness or vulnerability. Women like Angelina are simply born—fully formed from the head of Zeus with an undeniable presence. By contrast, he have seen the making of Jennifer Aniston, as she has shed a good 20 pounds, gone through countless trendy haircuts, and made the leap from television to film. It’s not a coincidence that Angelina found fame in movies and Jennifer found fame in television. Angelina is larger than life and demands a larger screen. Jennifer fills out the television screen comfortably but doesn’t strain at the edges. Jennifer does not scare men, and that is why they like her.
A few hours after my conversation with the guy, I microwaved myself a soy corn dog and joined him and a few others in conversation. And he said, “I’m glad to see you eating a corn dog. That makes me happy.” So what does a corn dog symbolize? Well, I think it symbolizes accessibility. I do not claim to be drop-dead gorgeous, but I do think I am more of an Angelina than a Jennifer. I hold my brunette head high and play up my lips. I know that my intelligence makes me seem far away and maybe even haughty. I talk with passion and force. But when I come out eating a corn dog, I automatically gain a few points of accessibility.
Later in the afternoon, I heard a TV interview with a professional matchmaker with a new VH1 show. He said something very interesting that comports with my revelations. He said, “Men want and need to see vulnerability in a women. As much as men like confident, successful women, they also like vulnerability. Men want to be needed.” Angelina does not need a man and very rarely shows any vulnerability. Jennifer does need a man and nowadays can even come off as desperate.
So what does this mean for young single females? Well, it means that being an Angelina might not always work to your advantage. You might need to do something to enhance your accessibility. Angelina might not scare Brad Pitt, but then, he is Brad Pitt. Angelina-types might scare most of today’s more insecure males.

One Angry Actress

2009-03-11T18:43:00.001-07:00

The Adobe Theater here in Albuquerque is putting on the classic play Twelve Angry Men , but they are keeping it all men. I intend to try and change that. I want to get a role in this show, so I intend to send this letter to them.

I write to you today in regards to your upcoming production of Twelve Angry Men. As both an actress and a first-year law student, I want to express my dismay that the Adobe Theater has missed a golden opportunity to fight gender inequality in both law and theater by committing to an all-male cast. If the Adobe Theater cast this play with both male and female actors, it would make a powerful, positive statement about the changing composition of both juries and stages.
Last fall two very important things happened to me: I caught the acting bug in a major way and also started law school. In the fall of 2008 I appeared as Alice in Closer at the Desert Rose Theater and in the first months of 2009 I appeared as Kathy in Vanities at the East Mountain Community Theater. When I saw the audition notice for Twelve Angry Men I got very excited, because this play would combine two huge presences in my life at this point. Law school has bored me, but theater has totally absorbed me. And here I saw a chance to see philosophies of law in action on the stage. Last semester I took criminal law and heard all about the arguments that come up in the play: that criminals must come from “bad environments,” that circumstantial evidence is dangerous, and that everyone has different definitions of “reasonable doubt.”
The play is called Twelve Angry Men, but let us examine exactly why. In 1955 when Reginald Rose wrote this play, only men could serve on juries. The American judicial system sadly did not consider women capable of deciding the fate of their fellow citizens. But according to my Civil Procedure professor Laura Gomez, women started appearing on juries in the 1970s, right around the time that women took hold of their forsaken rights in many other areas. The United States Constitution, the instrument that preserves most of our most sacred rights, includes many provisions related to the judicial system. But for much of our nation’s history, that judicial system closed itself to minorities of all kinds, including women.
And of course we see the same thing in the history of theater! It is common knowledge that women could not appear on the Elizabethan stages, and we now read another layer of humor into cross-dressing Shakespeare plays with male actors playing women dressing as men. Today women have taken their rightful places on stage and playwrights have obliged by creating some truly great roles for actresses.
One of the primary social functions of theater is to challenge the status quo. A great play and a great production can truly change people’s minds and maybe even lives. How many people came out of The Piano Lesson thinking differently about race, or came out of Cat On a Hot Tin Roof thinking differently about homosexuality, or Waiting for Godot thinking differently about the entire nature of existence? Twelve Angry Men is the kind of play that can truly make people think. With a boundary pushing, daring production, the play can take on even greater relevance and power. With a cast composed of both male and female actors, the theater can make a big statement: We have come a long way and we must keep going.
I completely respect the sanctity of the text. I majored in English in college and I know that we have only the words on the page and that these words are priceless. But I have read through the play and found very few references to gender. None of the jurors talk about their lives in a gendered way, and jurors refer to each other as “he” or “him” relatively infrequently. (In fact, by my count, Jurors 2, 7, and 12 never have a gender reference). You could of course change the pronouns to include female actors. But you don’t even have to do this! Keep the text exactly the same and have women playing males. That would make an even bigger statement of fighting the status quo and shaking up the theater world. One of the major themes of this play is that the audience does not know the backgrounds of these jurors. We must judge them only according to the words that come out of their mouths. Those words can come from either men or women.
I also of course understand that this is kind of a “period piece.” But the problems and issues that came up for a jury in 1955 still come up for juries in 2009, including the issue of capital punishment (upon which the New Mexico legislature will soon decide). We adapt Shakespeare and Chekhov to all kinds of settings, both in place and time, and use the timeless themes in those plays to comment upon our own time. Is there any reason not to do the same with Twelve Angry Men?
I hope the Adobe Theater will consider giving Albuquerque’s many fine actresses a chance to play a part in a groundbreaking, important work of theater and taking the opportunity to make a comment on the changing nature of society. We are fortunate here in Albuquerque to have an extremely diverse population from which to draw talent; in such a 12-person cast, the audience would expect racial and ethnic diversity, even though in a 1955 New York City jury, we would not have seen such racial and ethnic diversity. Let’s show the audience that juries have citizens from all walks of life, including women.

Sincerely,

Kristina Caffrey

Breaking Bad is Back in Black!

2009-03-02T19:09:00.001-08:00

I cannot wait for Sunday, March 8th, when my favorite television show Breaking Bad returns! If you haven't watched this show, you are missing something, my friends! I believe that this show has actually filled the void left by The Sopranos. Like that brilliant show, Breaking Bad shows us two equally compelling yet distinct worlds: the world of meth and the world of Walter White and his family. I love this show for a reason other than its inherent brilliance. The show is shot and set in Albuquerque, New Mexico. In September 2008 I walked onto the Breaking Bad set at Eldorado High School and talked for 15 minutes with the show's Emmy-winning star Bryan Cranston! That's right people--I have shaken the hand of an Emmy winner.
Here's a quick run-down of the show. Walter White is an invisible kind of man--he leads a life of quiet desperation as a high school chemistry teacher with a badgering wife and a son with cerebral palsy. Walter's life has somehow gotten away from him. He once had huge promise as a serious research scientist (this part of his backstory is still a little thin. Hopefully we'll get an answer this season about why he left high-stakes chemical research). Now he has to work at a car wash for extra money to make ends meet. He has a bad moustache and bad glasses. He's the type of guy who makes absolutely no impression on you when you look at him. He has become, in essence, a nobody.
But then Walter gets diagnosed with Stage 3 lung cancer, and instead of being the death sentence it is for most people, it becomes Walter's wake-up call. He doesn't want to get busy dying, so he gets busy living. He decides to use his mad chemistry skills to cook crystal meth, aided by a former student turned drug dealer. With the money he could earn from meth he can pay either for his cancer treatment or to leave his family something.
From there, the first season's 7 episodes (cut short by the writer's strike) careen between the crazy world of crystal meth and the world of a family facing a cancer diagnosis. The show perfectly balances and contrasts these two environments and asks the audience to consider which is the more hostile. I do not think I have ever seen a more realistic fictional portrayal of cancer--not the deathbed theatrics, but the very real choices that millions of families have to make. What do you do when your insurance won't cover the best treatment? Should you even have the treatment if you can only add a few years to your life? Why does everyone automatically start treating the patient so differently?
The flat-out best scene of the show, and one which I'm sure won Bryan Cranston his Emmy, comes in the 5th episode. Walter's family has called a sit-down to discuss why he refuses treatment. Bryan Cranston does some truly exceptional acting here. The look on his face when he says sarcastically, "Am I allowed to respond" is just perfect. The most poignant, heart-breaking moment comes when he breaks down in tears as his disabled son holds up his crutch and asks, "What if you gave up on me?" This scene is just perfect--perfectly scripted, directed, and acted.
As someone born and bred in Albuquerque, I love seeing my city on TV and so realistically portrayed--the good, the bad, and the ugly included. I love identifying locations, and I love how the writers have captured the local vocabulary, with its Mexican jokes, occasional Spanish slang, and references to "the A-B-Q" and "505." The actor who plays the meth kingpin unfortunately comes from Los Angeles, but the dialogue the writers have given him is pure New Mexican: "Nobody pushes meth in the South Valley but me!" They've even gotten the sound-track down, filling the meth world with Hispanic hip-hop (reggaeton) that comes straight from Radio Lobo.
I had screamed at the television (or rather, at my laptop, as I had to buy the show from amazon.com while away at college) when I spotted my alma mater, Eldorado High School, in the show. It was a brief shot of Walter and his wife having sex in their car in front of the science building. In the summer of 2008, I began seeing green signs with "Br" "Ba" on them around town. These signs pointed to wherever the show was shooting. One time in the summer I pulled into a local church and saw big trucks.
But then Friday afternoon in September, I actually crashed the set. I had just been out shopping for my stripper outfit for the play Closer (see post below) and as we were driving up Montgomery past Eldorado, I had a vision. I think I saw only a few trucks, but I knew it had to be Breaking Bad. I squealed and made my friends pull in to the parking lot. I mustered up some confidence (I was feeling particularly confident at that time due to playing a stripper) and walked towards all the commotion. Now, I have been on sets and I have watched many behind-the-scenes features on DVDs. I know movie sets. For a few minutes I watched all the unloading of all the equipment, including a full set of actual director's chairs. I correctly identified the craft services tent (that's the snack table to you laymen), the makeup semi, and a couple of very nice port-a-potty trailers.
Then I saw Bryan Cranston himself. For a few minutes I watched him milling around and then, from who knows where, I summoned up the courage to approach him. I don't remember exactly what I said. I probably babbled incoherently. But I know I said that I loved the show and thought everybody did a fantastic job. I told him I was a fan and had bought the shows on the internet, which could have accounted for the low ratings. And then I actually talked a little shop with him. "I'm kind of in law school right now," I said, "but I'm also acting in this play." And then I told him that he had given me courage as an actor to run around in my underwear on stage, given that in the show he runs around in his underwear (I probably look better, though). I was actually able to say, "You're an actor. I'm an actor."
And then I told him that meeting him at this location had an added dimension of coolness because I actually attended Eldorado High School. And I had a crush on my chemistry teacher who at one time had quite the drug trade himself. And then my friend told Bryan Cranston that I had appeared on Jeopardy! And this impressed Bryan Cranston! I couldn't believe it. Here he is on a critically acclaimed show and all I did was win Jeopardy a few times. "Not as good as appearing on Seinfeld," I said. (He played dentist Tim Whatley).
Around this time the makeup ladies began to surround Mr. Cranston, so I bid him goodbye and goodluck. I didn't ask for an autograph (I'm not that much of a nerd) and had no camera phone, so I don't have any proof that I actually met him and talked to him. But he was extremely gracious and generous with his time and seems like a genuinely nice guy. A week later he won an Emmy for Best Actor.
So please watch Breaking Bad and root for my friend Bryan Cranston and the city of Albuquerque. The show is simply fantastic, and knowing that I walked on the set makes it even more of a satisfying show for me. Watch it on AMC Sunday night!

Papa, I'm Coming Home

2009-02-28T20:14:00.000-08:00

Last night I watched a wonderfully sensual movie called Vicky Cristina Barcelona. That movie is not the subject of this post, but merely an entrance point to a particular train of thought. The movie took me back to last summer when I spent a week in Spain. And whenever I think of Spain I think of Papa: Ernest Hemingway. The movie’s beautifully photographed cafes (who knew Woody Allen actually had a photographic eye?) and Javier Bardem’s raspy, lilting Spanish took me right back not only to my own little cafes and bars but to the clean, well-lighted places of Hemingway.
See, when I was in Spain I tried to emulate old Ernie. The most concrete method of doing this was drinking an aperitif called Pernod. I actually did not like the licorice taste of the opaque yellow drink, but Jake Barnes kept calling to me from the doorways of little French and Spanish cafes, urging me to have just one more drink and get a little bit “tight.” The Pernods would lead into whole bottles of the best Spanish red wine—full bodied with Spanish passion and vigor, looking like the blood that Spaniards seem to so love spilling, and yet dirt-cheap. Do not try to use The Sun Also Rises as a drinking game. You would probably die of alcohol poisoning. The drinking that fills so many pages of Hemingway turned off many classmates a year ago in my 20th Century American Literature class. “Why do they drink so much?” they asked, completely ignoring their weekend binges. “It’s depressing.”
I have completely the opposite opinion of Hemingway: he does not make me depressed—he actually makes me feel very much alive. When I read Hemingway, I want to go places: Spain, Africa, Cuba, or even the little American towns of the Nick Adams stories. I want to meet all of those characters who are so beautiful in their sadness and so hard in their fragility. I can see how many people can find Hemingway unequivocally depressing—most novels end in death or uncertainty. Hemingway had a philosophy of nada—nothing means anything and everything ends in nothing. Yet amid all this nada, men fight for noble causes, women have torrid love affairs with matadors, and everyone gets quite tight (tight means drunk).
The really fantastic writers can make their readers believe things they might otherwise not believe. Ordinarily, I am completely against things like bullfighting and big-game hunting. Why do we need to kill large animals just to prove our supremacy? But when I read Hemingway, I find myself actually supporting such barbarity. Maybe this comes from his particular treatment of the bloodsports. He treats the animals involved with incredible respect—for a simple little river fishing trip in The Sun Also Rises, Hemingway calls the trout “he,” not “it.” Moby Dick confirmed my belief that whaling is a despicable practice, but somehow The Short Happy Life of Francis Maccomber didn’t do the same for shooting at lions from Land Rovers. I take Hemingway’s ability to override my intellectual, rational ideas as a sign of a true master.
These master artistic strokes come out in one of the most recognizable writing styles in the history of literature. It’s the famous Hemingway style: short declarative sentences with concrete nouns, few adjectives, and forceful action verbs. Hemingway style is a love-or-hate-it deal. I happen to love it. Literary studies will commonly contrast Hemingway with that other Big Name, Nobel-winning early 20th Century combatant for the title of Greatest American Novelist, William Faulkner. I actually go for the middle ground: F. Scott Fitzgerald. (One of my favorite Hemingway stories involves Fitzgerald. To decide which one of them was the better writer, Hemingway challenged the rater effeminate Fitzgerald to a boxing match.) The most I can say about Hemingway’s style is that it has a uniquely American quality. Unlike the Biblical grandstanding of Faulkner, the clean, vivid lines of Hemingway have an athletic readiness that feels like they could only come out of the wide open spaces of the American Midwest.
When I read The Sun Also Rises in my college class, I, like a good matador, predicted charges that my bullish classmates would level against Papa. Sure enough, a pretentiously politically-correct girl with bad bangs from Maine said, in so many words, “But he’s a misogynist bastard!” To which I responded, in so many words, “So?” You do not have to like the man’s morals to respect his writing. And I actually do not think he is so misogynistic. She then went for the easy strike, but I again thrust her away with a swish of my clever cape. “He must have just had a really tiny dick,” she said. I responded, “Darling, that is a HUGE problem. Hemingway is very much concerned with how to define masculinity in the 20th century. I’m sure if you were a guy you would be more sympathetic with how Hemingway’s characters struggle to define masculinity.”
And indeed, I think Hemingway’s questioning of what makes a man a man is his most important line of inquiry and the reason for his continuing relevance today. Everywhere I see young men of my generation struggling to come up with a definition of masculinity that will allow them to feel masculine while not offending current notions of feminism. Masculinity in the 21st century is a subject for many future posts, but I think that young men today could really gain something from reading Hemingway. We talk so much these days about feminism and whether women really have achieved equal levels with men. But amid this conversation, we forget to talk about how masculinity responds. Hemingway’s heroes struggle deeply to adapt to a new world in which war has become mechanized, women have become loose, and God has forsaken them. Now where can they turn to prove their manhood?
Hemingway has recently fallen out of fashion in literary circles because he is so politically incorrect. He was an overly masculine, arrogant man who railed against mental weakness but then committed suicide. He was a son of a bitch kind of guy. And apparently we cannot forgive him for that.
Reading the short story “A Clean, Well-lighted Place” will take you five minutes, but it will stick with you for much longer. The Sun Also Rises reads very easily but will knock you out with its subtlety. Everyone should read some Hemingway, but he will be especially useful to young, confused men.
Now I’m back off to reminisce about Spain and sitting at a restaurant in the town of Ronda on the Calle Pedro Romero (the name of the bullfighter in The Sun Also Rises) looking down at the bullring with its giant picture of Hemingway.

Genre Wars

2009-02-21T09:58:00.000-08:00

Last night I watched the latest in the American Film Institute’s Greatest Ever Count-Down shows. It seems like every five minutes we get a new countdown in which the AFI manages to cover the exact same material they did last Oscar season, but repackaged under the title of the New and Best Ever Count-Down. Last night had something do with the 10 Best Movies in 10 Different Genres. The AFI has a very big problem with genre, in that they don’t really know the hallmark characteristics of each genre. So as soon as they started on the Science Fiction genre, I expected trouble. I called #1 correctly—2001: A Space Odyssey—and I also correctly called that the AFI would put a movie on the list that clearly does not belong: Star Wars.
Star Wars is NOT science fiction. It is fantasy. Let me explain why.
The whole space thing tends to throw people off. Just because Star Wars is set in space does not mean it has anything to do with science fiction. For whatever reason, possibly because of truly science fiction movies like 2001, or The Day the Earth Stood Still, or Close Encounters of the Third Kind, we automatically associate space, space ships, and aliens with science fiction. But try for a moment to imagine Star Wars without the space—that may sound like a weird command, but just try it. Ignore the space ships and focus on the characters, the dialogue, the themes, and the costumes. And what do you get? You get Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, and King Arthur. Everybody’s wearing cloaks and robes, we’ve got a princess in need of rescue, we’ve got a “wizard,” we’ve got “knights,” and for heaven’s sakes, we’ve got SWORDS. They may be laser swords, but they’re still swords.
The very first words we ever get from Star Wars suggest that it belongs to the fantasy genre: “A long time ago…” Fantasy tends to take place in the past or present, while science fiction tends to take place in the future or present. In such science fiction films like Blade Runner, Terminator, or the Matrix, we get the clear sense of events in the future; we often even get an exact year. Science fiction often takes place in a carefully designed future because it ultimately takes place in our world—that is to say, Earth. Science fiction imagines an alternate or future Earth. Fantasy, on the other hand, imagines a completely alternate world. That world may of course have contact with Earth, as in Chronicles of Narnia. But Star Wars never claims any knowledge of Earth. It imagines a completely different, self-enclosed universe more akin to Tolkien’s Middle Earth.
2001: A Space Odyssey, all of the fine adaptations of Phillip K. Dick stories—Blade Runner, Total Recall, I, Robot—and the Matrix movies deal with the dangers of artificial intelligence. The dangers of computers and A.I. is a hugely prevalent theme in science fiction, and yet in the Star Wars galaxy, R2D2 and C3PO run around providing comic relief instead of paranoia. Star Wars does have armies of droids, and the characters do worry about these droid armies, but they worry about the armies as armies, not as dangerous droids. Whereas Phillip K. Dick would have a field day with the collective hive brain of the Storm Troopers, George Lucas simply used them as effectively faceless henchmen. And while Darth Vader at first does seem like a robot, we learn in a series of big reveals that he is of course human.
The conflict in science fiction often becomes man vs. machine/technology (see Terminator, 2001, Jurassic Park, and even Frankenstein). In Star Wars the central conflict has nothing to do with man vs. technology. It is purely man vs. man. We see the expression of this in the ultimate form of man vs. man combat: the sword fight. Han Solo prefers the modern blaster, but the Jedi respect the sanctity of low-tech, hand-to-hand combat.
As its name tends to imply, science fiction usually includes some discussion of science. Jules Verne, one of the fathers of the genre, had impeccable scientific knowledge in From the Earth to the Moon and 2,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Other parents like H.G. Wells and Mary Shelley glossed over the science, but Shelley’s Dr. Frankenstein at least quotes some well-known scientific names. Michael Crichton always gives you the idea that he has scrupulously researched his scientific issues. Jurassic Park’s science is completely plausible—Crichton just takes it one further step to make it fiction. Isaac Asimov and Carl Sagan actually did scientific research in addition to writing fiction and had copious knowledge of really hardcore scientific areas.
Star Wars, on the other hand, completely ignores its scientific questions. How can our heroes cover such vast swaths of the galaxy in no time at all, never having to resort to spaceship hibernation? How can our heroes disembark on any planet and breathe comfortably without any adaptive equipment? How do our heroes always manage to speak the same language and understand each other (at least Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy addressed this question)? If they have technology to give Luke a new hand, why can’t the Storm Troopers shoot straight? What, exactly, are “proton torpedoes,” and why will they make the Death Star explode?
And lastly, and perhaps most importantly, we have the Force. I’ve heard Harrison Ford describe the Force as “religion’s greatest hits.” Some sci-fi writers like Asimov and Sagan did have a spiritual side and tried to explore the impacts that science and technology have on spirituality (especially in Sagan’s Contact). But most science fiction has done away with religion, replacing God with technology, or in the case of Brave New World, replacing Lord with Ford. Science fiction is a world of cynicism. Science fiction challenges the audience to question—what if the world happened this way? Can I trust technology? What does it mean to be “human?” What place do morals, right and wrong, and good and evil have in this world? Fantasy, on the other hand, is a world of faith. Fantasy challenges the audience to believe—in things like heroism, friendship, unambiguous definitions of good and evil, resurrection, and magic. So you have to ask yourself, how does Star Wars challenge its viewers? Star Wars makes us believe in a mystical thing called the Force that turns ordinary farm boys into heroes and makes us believe that good will always win out over evil.
Fantastic as an idea? That’s your choice. Fantastic as a genre? Definitely.

It Was 45 Years Ago Today...

2009-02-07T11:28:00.000-08:00

I'm so sorry I have neglected this wonderful, stupendous blog recently, but I've had Tech Week rehearsals for my new play that opens today. And then of course I've had school, which tends to take up a lot of time. But I haven't forgotten you!
So for today, just consider the monumental event that happened 45 years ago today. On February 7th, 1964, the British invasion began when the Beatles landed at JFK airport. Thousands of fans unexpectedly awaited their arrival, signalling the start of American Beatlemania.
Here's a clip from an excellent documentary about the Beatles' first trip to America. Watching their press conference just brings a smile to my face.
Aren't they just the most adorable thing you've ever seen? If I had been alive then and living anywhere near New York, I would have been up there with the best of those screamers. Beatles forever!

Young Man Blues

2009-01-30T19:36:00.000-08:00

Oh well a young man ain't got nothin' in the world these days
I said a young man ain't got nothin' in the world these days

You know in the old days
When a young man was a strong man
All the people they'd step back
When a young man walked by

But you know nowadays
It's the old man,
He's got all the money
And a young man ain't got nothin' in the world these days
I said nothing

Everybody knows that a young man ain't got nothin'.
Everybody!
Everybody knows that a young man ain't got nothin'
He got nothin'
Nothin'

Take it easy on the young man
They ain't got nothin' in the world these days
I said they ain't got nothin'!
They got sweet fuck-all!

On February 14, 1970 the Who took the stage at the University of Leeds Refectory and thrashed out their trademarked brand of bombastic rock and roll. They put the result out as the album Live at Leeds, which consistently appears on lists as the Greatest Live Album of All Time. But this post is really not about the Who. I want to talk about one of the songs they played that evening. An old jazz pianist named Mose Allison wrote “Young Man Blues,” but the Who turned it into an anthem of alienated youth to put on the shelf right next to “My Generation.” The Who’s version positively explodes with aggression, distortion, anger, and generally kicks ass.
A little while ago my father accused me of being cynical. Now, I actually do not want to be cynical. I try my darnedest to not slip into the bottomless abyss of youthful cynicism. But right now I’m going to take a giant leap toward cynicism. Today, every person under 25 should be singing “Young Man Blues.” Because right now, young people do not have much to look forward to, but do have a whole lot to be cynical about. I’ve got the Young Man Blues right now.
The Who performing this song in 1970 is very, very strange coming so soon after the 1960s, the veritable Decade of Youth. Youth movements essentially propelled the counterculture and the hippies, and the youth of America gladly stepped in to help in the civil rights movement. I don’t know the average age of Woodstock attendees, but I bet the number would fall below 30. In fact, didn’t a saying gain popularity that went something like, “Don’t trust anyone under 30?”
The 1960s celebrated youth and young people more than any other time. In 1960 we elected the youngest president ever. Four years later, four twenty-something boys from Liverpool took the world by storm. College students at campuses all around the country started putting on black turtlenecks and occupying administrative buildings. Millions of young people said “fuck off” to their parents’ values and got into Volkswagen buses on the road to Woodstock. Yes, a huge dark specter in the shape of Vietnam hung over the heads of many of the nation’s young men, but at least they had rock and roll to console them. It must have been a brilliant time to be a young person in America.
And now nearly forty years after the 60s ended (or rather, died), the Youth Revolution has died. And who killed it? The murderers unmasked turn out to be the very people who grew up in the 60s with so much idealism, so much positivism, and so many dreams. In the 70s they disappeared into a disco fueled haze of Me-centricity. In the 80s they must have had a collective acid flashback that led them to, for some inconceivable reason, elect Ronald Reagan. Their dreams no longer turned on peace and love, but rather on gigantic piles of money in an unregulated economy.
And now my generation has to deal with all the crap that the Baby Boomers hath wrought: the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression; a healthcare system in turmoil; technologies that while pretending to bring us together have really pushed us apart; a media explosion that came at the expense of the search for truth; an attitude of instant consumerism; and the biggest of them all, an environmental catastrophe whose existence many Boomers persistently deny. Where did everything go wrong? Where did the promise of the 60s go?
Generally speaking, parents of all species try to make the world better for their offspring. The evolutionary will to survive not only impacts the individual, but the species in general and the direct line of descent. Parents who have offspring want their offspring to survive, and have an evolutionary incentive to do so. If just one offspring can survive, the species has a chance to change and grow and evolve in a positive way. I don’t know if the last few generations suddenly lost that instinct or if their intentions just panned out much differently than they planned. Could the previous generations really have wanted My Generation to have to go through another Great Depression? Another World War? Another energy crisis? How could my parents have done so many things that make my future so uncertain?
In a few years, all those people will be dead and gone, but my generation will still struggle with a world of terrorism and environmental crisis and will still be paying for the huge economic mistakes. The Baby Boomers said they wanted fun, and boy did they have their fun, but now my classmates and I have to pick up the broken pieces. Today and in the next decades the youth of today will pay like never before for the mistakes of the previous generations. In 1964, the youth of the world, or at least America, could look at the world and say, “Wow, the future looks good.” In 2009, I cannot look at the world and see that the future looks good. Instead, I say, “Wow. The future looks frightening.” Right now I can’t imagine why anyone would want to have a baby—why anyone would want to bring a child into a world that seems on an unalterable course of completely wrong trajectory?
I recently read an article on the dismal job outlook for recent college grads. For the last thirty years or so, the world has said to its children: “You can have anything. And you do have everything. The world can belong to you.” But now we have to face the harsh reality that these promises have turned out empty. Coming from an environment where we have never known such things as hunger, I predict that my generation will not cope very well with the deepening depression.
At least one ray of hope remains. The so-called Greatest Generation lived through depression and war and all kinds of upheaval and developments and still won’t go away. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: desperate times bring out the best in people. I hope that the desperate times ahead will bring out the best in my generation. And I know that the Baby Boomers will stubbornly stick around into their 80s, so maybe they can help us and we can solve all the world’s problems together.

Movie Review: Revolutionary Road

2009-01-24T13:51:00.000-08:00

What do Henry David Thoreau, Pink Floyd, and Revolutionary Road have in common? They all caution us against living lives of “quiet desperation.”
Thoreau said, “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.”
Despite all the histrionics and shouting and banging of furniture, the possibly most painful scene comes near the end of the movie as Frank (Leonardo DiCaprio) and April (Kate Winslet) share an epically awkward breakfast. They talk but they don’t talk about anything. They make their mouths work only to avoid an even more painful silence. This interaction comes after nearly two hours of Talking and April begging Frank to just stop all the Talking and before a devastating conclusion played out largely without the wordiness that characterizes the majority of the movie. Frank and April keep trying to Talk but never can. But they can always “talk” to their neighbors or friendly real estate lady, glossing over the real issues in that familiar 50s, Leave it to Beaver dialogue of recipes, weather, and pleasantry. We often see Frank poring over a pocket French phrase book. See, Frank and April are moving to Paris. Along with the new scenery, they actually need a new language to talk to each other. Although Frank wants to learn French, his messages to his wife are already getting lost in translation.
I have not read the book upon which the movie is based, but I can imagine the challenges of adaptation. How could all the internal thoughts, feelings, and slow growth and breakdown of the central characters play out in a dramatic way? The screenwriter did a perfect job of crafting dialogue that, even while filled with Big Ideas, still rang true as actual dialogue. The screaming matches give the audience the Big Themes, but the real story is in the little details, the tiniest word or flicker of eyes that give the audience the real insight into the characters and the real sea of troubles that boils away just below the surface.
Both Frank and April are intensely unlikeable—selfish, unrealistic, and narcissistic. Both Leo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet are absolutely perfect. DiCaprio manages to portray a brutal sense of self-loathing and disgust with himself even under his open hostility. Kate Winslet does both the explosions, going from 0 to 60 in two seconds, and the slow breakdowns, collapsing in silent tears in front of the sink, equally well. A rich tapestry of characters actors surround them, and each one feels like they come with a completely drawn backstory: the neighbor secretly in love with April, the real estate agent whose perkiness hides a deep trauma, and the bloated middle management guy made for the 1950s.
The most intriguing Big Idea for me was how Frank, and even more so April, believed that they were “special” or destined for something great. Tolstoy said that happy families are happy in the same way, but unhappy families are unhappy in different ways. We can imagine all the different ways of unhappiness for couples like Frank and April, but they seem to think that their unhappiness is somehow special and unusual. Even from watching “Mad Men,” we know that Frank and April have no reservation on unhappiness in the 50s. Their despair springs not necessarily from their lives themselves, but from the fact that their lives have not fulfilled their expectations. They were special, and now they find themselves living a very unspecial life. April assures Frank that when they get to France Frank will have the time to do whatever he wants and to figure out his special talent. But the audience knows the alternative side that to that idea—what if Frank actually has no special talent? What if Frank does not actually want to do anything?
Frank and April have so many dreams and hopes, but none of them actually have any substance or form beyond the vaguest of outlines. They hate their lives, but they have no alternative. Way back in Winslet and DiCaprio’s last outing, Winslet’s Rose stood on the Titanic and complained about the “inertia” of her life. Frank and April have the same problem of inertia. They hate their lives, but do not have the courage to move forward or backward. They’re stuck, and even though they have vague ideas about how to become unstuck, they can’t take that first step. Between unhappiness and uncertainty, Frank and April ultimately choose unhappiness.
SPOILER ALERT!!! HERE BE SPOILERS When Oscar nominations came out on Thursday, they conspicuously left out Revolutionary Road. I wondered why such a well-made movie (technically, it is impeccable) with such Big Ideas should be shut out. Well, I found the answer. This movie has a very large political agenda. This movie says that abortion should remain legal, both for women’s mental health and physical health. None of the reviews I read said anything about what part the politics play in this movie. I see this political agenda as a huge part of this movie, both at the level of plot and at the thematic level. The Academy is actually quite conservative (see their fawning over Clint Eastwood in the last few years), and on Thursday they said that Kate Winslet playing an illiterate Nazi was more acceptable than Kate Winslet playing a self-abortionist. I applaud the filmmakers for having the guts to not only address such a controversial issue, but to take a position and see it through. The audacity in dealing with abortion turns an otherwise well-made suburban melodrama into a Movie You Must See and one that should be remembered.
If you are not familiar with the particular method of abortion in this film, read the perfect Hemingway short story “Hills Like White Elephants.”

Post Inauguration Thoughts and the Making of History

2009-01-21T16:23:00.000-08:00

So why shouldn’t I throw my hat into the ring with all the other commentators? I watched it, and over all, it underwhelmed me. So here’s my take on the whole Inauguration Day Madness.
First of all, what went wrong with the music? Aretha’s canned backing track arrangement simply reeked of schmaltz, and when combined with her ridiculous hat, took us all back to the Reagan era inaugurations (I wasn’t alive then, so I’m guessing at the amount of schmaltz and surplus bows). And while Itzhak Perlman, Yo-Yo Ma, and John Williams collectively have more talent that the rest of the world put together, that performance fell flat. By the way, do we not have any home-grown classical musical talent? No corn-fed Midwest violin virtuosos? And you simply cannot do “Simple Gifts” without a trumpet. We all recognize, even if we don’t know the name, Copland’s superb arrangement of this melody. It needs a trumpet. I don’t even particularly like trumpets, but to do that piece with no trumpet fanfare is a sacrilege!
Obama’s speech, as I expected, had neither emotional punch nor any kind of even vaguely specific plans. While most of it just went in one ear and out the other, one comment made my jaw drop. He said, “We will not apologize for our way of life.” What!!! We are apologizing for our way of life, we have been apologizing, and we will probably continue to apologize for many years. The current economic crisis, the apocalyptic weather, and even the terrorist attacks are invitations to apologize for a lifestyle that has spent the last several decades completely out of control. If we want the change that Obama promised, then each and every individual person also needs to change, and change fundamentally, our life styles, or else we will have a much bigger apology to make.
The ceremony reached its low point with the “poem,” if I can even call it that. The poem itself had no rises and falls, no tension, no drama, and of course no rhythm or rhyme, or even something vaguely resembling any kind of appeal to the listener’s ear. But even the worst poems improve through the voice of a good reader. And this lady could not read a poem to save her life. At times she seemed to try to recall Whitman with the catalogs of ordinary activity. But she didn’t even come close to doing it with the vitality and grace that Whitman did. Shall I remind you that Robert Frost’s “The Gift Outright,” which he read at Kennedy’s inauguration, lasts only 16 lines?
The high point came with Benediction Dude. I don’t recall his name, but there was a guy who knows how to talk! That was some good old-fashioned preaching, man! It succeeded superbly.
All the newscasts and all the people that the newscasts interviewed kept talking about the inauguration as “historic.” And that got me thinking about just what that word means. Perhaps it means that later history books will include this event. Or it means that this event is what I call a “before and after” moment, meaning it represents a watershed moment that changes all that comes after it. It seems that historic events have nothing to do with history, unless it is to change history. Rather, historic events relate to the future—after historic events, the future takes on a different hue.
And looking at all the crowds, I also thought about the ritual involved—the gathering of people and the shouting. And I thought about what historic events like these in which I would have liked to participate. And the first one I thought of was Woodstock. Woodstock’s historic—don’t laugh, it is. Or Live Aid or Live 8. When I think of huge numbers of people gathered together for a common purpose, I tend to think of those moments that arise almost spontaneously, independent of political calendars and formal governments. I had difficulty embracing Inauguration Day as a really “historic” day because the Constitution says that it will happen on January 20. But the moments I think of—the Woodstock, the war protests—have much more an air of magic around them because they spring from the collective desire of individuals untouched by Constitutions and government arrangement.
I’m reminded actually, of a comparatively trivial event, but one which first showed me how people could come together to celebrate a common purpose: summer 1996 in Darmstadt, Germany. Germany had won the Euro Cup when only a split second later the street erupted in celebration. Only nine years old, I had never seen so many people shouting, singing, honking horns, and running through the streets. I had also never seen such public drunkenness and public urination. Along with music, sports provide a ritualistic setting conducive to individuals coming together into a collective whole. Likewise, look at the Olympic Games. I always cry during the opening ceremonies of the Olympic Games because they have such an investment in ritual meaning.
I think that “historic” also means an event that makes you say to your grandchildren, “I was there.” And I wish that I could participate in some event that I can say to someone, “I was there.” It seems that these events grow ever fewer and fewer. I mean, where are the protests? The closest I’ve come to an “I was there” moment was 1) at a U2 concert and 2) Harry Potter book opening parties. But I really wish that I could find some opportunity to go to an event that really means something, that presents, as Wordsworth would say, “a spontaneous overflow of powerful feeling” by a huge group of impassioned people. Of course, corralling the requisite thousands of people would require a little bit of planning. But I definitely want, sometime in my lifetime, to say “I was there.”

Pre-Inauguration Thoughts

2009-01-17T18:21:00.000-08:00

The best moment comes at 2:50--"fear itself."

As we draw ever closer to an inauguration that every newscaster and every other kind of commentator has insisted is “historic,” I also feel compelled to give my comments.
Bottom line: It does not excite me. I have not ever and still do not “get” what everyone sees in Barack Obama. While I do believe he possesses the intelligence and political savvy to make an effective president, I just do not see him as any kind of political messiah or in any way particularly different than any other politician. The rules of a post-racial-discrimination world tell us to completely ignore skin color and focus instead on the intangibles. Well, completely ignoring the fact that Obama is African-American, I see nothing spectacular about him. And while so many people have lauded the intangibles of Obama (“there’s just something about him”), I remain completely unconvinced that he has that special something that lifts the great statesmen of history above the level of piddling, career minded politicians.
You may say that I am, at the tender age of 21, already jaded. When I look at my generation, I do think they look awfully cold (50 points for anyone who recognizes that allusion) and cynical. Perhaps my upper middle class upbringing has deafened me to Obama’s appeal to the disadvantaged masses (the whole idea of “disadvantaged,” of course, is highly debatable).
But consider this. Listening to the video above, I got chills down my spine. Then I listened to Sir Winston Churchill’s “Their Finest Hour” speech. It seriously made me start crying. Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill just happen to be my favorite statesmen of all history, and coincidentally, they possessed something frequently attributed to Obama: the gift of rhetoric—the ability to make thousands of people hang on every word and to actually change hearts and lives through the sheer power of the spoken word. Now, I have to disagree with those who attribute to Obama that singular gift. I keep waiting to hear the magical Obama incantation. But nothing Obama has ever said has moved me or touched upon that mysterious place somewhere deep in my heart.
And I am not over-intellectualizing here. I can put aside all the criticisms of Roosevelt—the philandering, the internment camps, the creation of the modern welfare state—and Churchill—the outdated Empire mongering—and judge them purely on their ability to create a personal, visceral connection with every single listener. I regularly try to put aside any pre-conceived notions I have about Obama and focus purely on the pauses, the flickering glances, the timbre of the voice, and the commitment to the moment. Most times I wish I could tell Obama something like, “Once more, with feeling.” A dozen seasoned speech writers may have punched out those speeches, but something in Obama’s actual delivery of the carefully weighted words gets lost in translation.
Of course, desperate times bring out the best in men, and Roosevelt and Churchill certainly saw the most desperate hours of their respective countries. Three of Churchill’s best speeches, “Blood, toil, sweat and tears,” “We will fight on the beaches,” and “Their finest hour” sound eerily similar to those encouraging, bolstering, inspiring battlefield speeches in Lord of the Rings and Braveheart (seriously, look them up). Of course I look at the rhetoric of these two great men within that rhetoric’s context. And while I myself have felt the bite of depression over the sordid state of the world, I haven’t yet seen Obama’s speaking rise to the level of the current crisis. Desperate times require desperate measures, and while millions of Americans no doubt feel that desperation, I do not detect any kind of emotion other than his usual cucumber coolness in Obama’s voice or demeanor.
And while the media constantly remind us of Obama’s extraordinary personal history, I haven’t heard him really connect to any kind of personal struggle in his speeches. Yet I find it absolutely fascinating that in the inaugural address above, Roosevelt chose to characterize fear as “paralyzing;” when he said those words he stood on leg braces supporting his paralyzed legs. Of course, the American public did not know the extent of FDR’s paralysis, but using that word possibly allowed him to connect to the rest of the words—to give just the right inflection to the word “fear” that allowed the American public to believe that he truly understood fear.
So before you partake in the endless coverage on Tuesday, take a listen to FDR’s first inauguration speech and consider, in the midst of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, the true power of language.

Glory Days

2009-01-13T17:59:00.000-08:00

For the lyrics of "Glory Days," click on this

I had a request to talk about the Bruce Springsteen song “Glory Days,” and since the song has become prescient in my life for two reasons, I’ve decided to oblige. And while I will definitely devote an entire column to the Boss in general, today I will keep it just to this song.
The requester interprets the song as addressing the myth of the 60s—a kind of golden age, Edenic period that is, unfortunately, only a myth. I have a much different interpretation of the song. I see it as referring to a different myth: the myth of High School as a golden age in every individual’s life. Many of Springsteen’s big songs have an anthemic quality that makes them sound like freedom loving, life affirming, adventurous declarations of independence. We all sing along to the choruses, but underneath the veneer of growling guitars, the verses hide a much darker side full of despair, regret, and uncertainty. “Glory Days” is one of those songs.
Springsteen always fills his songs with immediately recognizable characters. And who among us doesn’t know, or at least can’t imagine, the kind of character of the first verse? This is the high school sports star who probably made it all the way to the State tournament. He dreamed of making it to the big leagues, but didn’t even make it to college ball. Get a few drinks in this guy and he’ll start telling the same old stories about his high school glory days.
The second verse gets even darker; the high school prom queen, popular girl, maybe even head cheerleader, is now a depressed divorced mom. But one thing is guaranteed to pick up her mood—talking about those good old days when her world offered seemingly limitless possibilities, when she could have her pick of any boy, and before she picked the wrong one.
And is it just a Jersey thing, or does the emphasis on drinking in this song sound a little scary? I won’t diagnose all the characters in the song as alcoholics, but they do seem to drown their sorrows in the bottle, especially in the first verse. The baseball player is walking out of the bar, but presented with an opportunity to reminisce, he heads back into the bar.
And what about that narrator? I think of him as not a popular guy in high school. I imagine him as guy just on the outside of all the cool cliques. But he was still there and he can still reminisce. And more importantly, he can bump up Baseball Boy and Pretty Girl’s egos when he supports their version of high school history.
The last verse really sums up the theme of the song. We don’t necessarily want to live in the past, but of course we all end looking back to some extent. We hope that we find something to do in life that surpasses what we did in our youth, but inevitably “time slips away and leaves you” with nothing but memories of those lost glory days.
Now, every individual might have different glory days. Some of us definitely did see some glory in high school. Others might have to wait for college. But high school does seem to get mythologized more than any other period. Look at American Graffiti, Grease, or any John Hughes movie. High schools are generally small enough to afford good chances for any kid to shine. But they also have enough hormonal angst to drive those individuals to outshine their peers.
Does Bruce have a warning for us in this song? Is he telling us that success in youth will create unhappiness later in life? That if we peak too early, we’ll end up depressed? Should we all skate along in the middle of the pack, and then we won’t end up bitter about our unrealized potential?
Yesterday I had coffee with someone I knew in high school and even back to middle school. We did a little reminiscing about high school, but fortunately we both had news about college triumphs and opportunities for the future. And I admit that I had some motivation apart from just wanting to talk to this girl about the general state of the world—I wanted to reminisce. I’ve stayed in touch with some old friends beyond the expiration date of the relationship precisely because I want an opportunity to reminisce. It takes two to tango, right? Well, it also takes two to reminisce about glory days. Sure, we can all revel individually in our memories, but laughing and talking about them with friends (or even enemies) will always be better. And I believe this represents a big part of why we value old friendships and go to high school reunions. We want to reminisce. And we need another person to answer the questions, “Did that actually happen? Were we actually that crazy? Were those days actually that glorious?”
The other reason for the pertinence of this song to my life is my new theatrical project. It’s called Vanities, and it looks at three friends across a span of ten years. In the final scene, the friends gather after a few years of not seeing each other and attempt to reconnect. One of the girls definitely sees their high school cheerleading time as glory days. One girl cut the chord and has found bigger and better things. My character gets stuck somewhere in the middle; recognizing the value of glory days but hoping that she can move beyond them.
“Glory Days” does depend slightly on the image of high school in the 50s and 60s: high school’s ultimate Golden Age. High school has certainly changed a lot, primarily in that we've raised the stakes dramatically. Success in high school now does matter, and AP classes, college paranoia, and 16 year-old pitchers with multiple shoulder surgeries have sucked a lot of the carefree fun out of high school. For another great picture of high school glory days, take a listen to “Night Moves” by Bob Seger, the Springsteen of Michigan.

Down the Vacation Vortex

2009-01-12T12:38:00.001-08:00

I have approximately forty hours before I have to go back to school. And as I always do at the end of periods away from school, I am panicking. Why should I panic after three restful weeks? Well, I am suddenly remembering all the things I thought I would do during those weeks—my gigantic “to-do” list that remains woefully un-checked-off. Now, I didn’t procrastinate. I plain and simple forgot the existence of the to-do list. I have come to the end of yet another vacation saying to myself, “What the hell did I do for the past three weeks?”
Time off from work or school is a kind of Catch-22. During the workweek we constantly say, “I can’t wait for some time off. I have so much to do and no time to do it.” Then when we get a couple of weeks off, we end up getting bored. Somehow we still have not found a balance between work/school time and other time. If only we could convince America to switch to a shorter work week—it works for Sweden, right?
Normally I have a lot of self-motivation and self-discipline when it comes to doing my work (that is to say, school). But I lose all of that when I go into break mode. I fall into a vicious cycle of sleeping more and doing less. All the sleeping and non-doing just makes me sleep more and do even less. I go into hibernation mode and somehow my brain actually convinces me of the non-existence of school, grades, emails, and books. Instead, I find perfect contentment in re-runs of the Real Housewives of Orange County, sleeping 10 hours a night, and scrounging random food from the refrigerator. And although I said last October, “I should clean out my closet over Christmas break,” my closet has actually become more crammed with clothes bought at the after-Christmas sales.
So why do I feel bad about this laziness? Does my own personal internal drive object? Does my upbringing in a household of extreme busy-ness exert a subtle pressure on me to always stay active? Does the lingering influence of the Puritan work ethic on American culture make me feel guilty about my relaxation? If I lived in say, Spain, I probably would not feel any pangs of guilt or panic after three weeks of lounging around.
I seem to be capable of operating at only two speeds—supersonic and ‘slow crawl.’ And I know many people similar to myself who exhaust themselves during the week looking forward to the weekend, and find that the weekend exhausts them just as much as the week. We all look for that elusive balance that could let us move at a smooth 50 mph most of the time instead of sliding into a pattern of alternating overwhelming frazzle-ment and boredom.
I really don’t like the fact that I’ve been lazy the last few weeks, but I can’t do much about it. I honestly feel like I just woke up yesterday from hibernation. And I did do a few useful things—I started this blog, I got a part in a play and memorized all my lines, and I exercised almost every day. And I do believe that we all need some time to simply do nothing. We need time to relax and rest our brains and bodies to prepare for the next assault. We have to recharge the batteries. And I’ll clean out those closets on Martin Luther King Jr. day.

Closer

2009-01-09T11:46:00.000-08:00

I promised a blog entry devoted to my experience acting in the play “Closer.” And I like to alternate things between personal stories and cultural commentary. I’m actually just starting rehearsals for another play, so I thought I better tell this story before I get all confused.
I guess you could say I’ve always had an interest in acting. I remember I took an acting summer school class at around age 10-11. My first drama class came in 8th grade, and I continued in drama classes freshman and sophomore year in high school. But time constraints got to me and I didn’t do much for a few years. I did a few plays in college, including one here in Albuquerque over summer break. And then during college a lovely drama professor who just happened to be English started a Friday afternoon tradition of play reading—just sitting round a table with bad pizza reading plays aloud. Last May I went to London and saw a play every night for a month. It didn’t immediately put the spark back in me, but I came back thinking that I should really revisit the whole theater thing.
In late August I auditioned at a local community theater for a play called “Closer,” by Patrick Marber. I didn’t get it, but the stage manager who gave me the message said that everyone had liked my work and they all felt bad that they couldn’t cast me. I decided that the theater thing just wouldn’t happen that semester and went back to cello.
One week into law school, I was sitting at Garduno’s happy hour when the stage manager from “Closer” called and said the original cast member had dropped out. Would I do it? Well of course! A great role in a great play at a conveniently located theater? I couldn’t resist.
For the next four weeks (exactly four weeks from the call to opening night) I worked my ass off, or rather, my ass out. Because I played a stripper. Yes, sweet little modest, goody-two-shoes good girl Kristina played a stripper. And did I mention the smoking, drinking, swearing, and physical violence? But I thought, if Natalie Portman could play this role in the movie, then why couldn’t I? The play has four characters, two men and two women, who jump from bed to bed and then yell at each other about it. If I was to effectively portray the essence of Alice Ayers, I would have to completely change myself and take myself where I had never gone before.
But somehow, I did. And I found playing such an open, bold character as Alice extremely liberating. Somehow I found within myself the material for a character completely unlike myself—someone who always says exactly what she means. And I can’t really explain my “technique.” I don’t know exactly how it happened, but I soon found myself walking with a little bit more swing in my hips on the way to school, or mouthing off to my parents. I think I had always wanted to be like Alice—I especially had always wanted to have her sexual openness and aggression. For whatever reason, I had never become such a sexually confident woman myself, but once I had permission and encouragement to do that, somehow I found that raw energy within me. And although it sounds horribly politically incorrect, the fake cigarette in my hand made me feel incredibly sexy.
As the rehearsals went on, I discovered that Alice and I were really not so different. Like her, I want to be loved. I get jealous. I’ve wanted to say the words, “I love you. Why won’t you let me?” I lie. I have scars. And I’ve been in love. It sounds corny, but once you find those essential bits of humanity in common, the differences don’t seem so insurmountable. I easily found Alice’s innocence, love, and emotional core, and even her anger. I admit that I often get angry, but I don’t really know how to express that anger. With a script in hand, I finally found a way to verbally express all those angry feelings.
But unlike Alice, I still didn’t know what men want, or how to be sexy. I couldn’t seem to find her “edge.” So one evening I wore my Who jacket to rehearsal. My Who jacket is my most prized article of clothing—a distressed, studded, zippered leather jacket emblazoned with the Who’s name and logo. In that jacket, I feel like an absolute badass. It gives me confidence and attitude. I kid you not—in that jacket I finally found Alice’s edge. I ended up wearing it in two scenes
Finding the sexiness was the hardest part, but also the part that has made the biggest impact on my own life. I spent by far the most amount of time on the “strip scene.” This scene takes place in a private room of a strip club. I just could not think of myself as sexy. I could not loosen my body enough. I stood there awkwardly, muscles tense. I didn’t have a problem with the lack of clothing. I mean, compared with what I wear to the swimming pool, I actually had on quite a lot for that scene. I actually had enough confidence in how my body looked, but I didn’t have the confidence in my mind to allow me to think of myself as desirable or attractive or sexy.
I practiced walking a lot. I felt like America’s Next Top Model, walking back and forth across the stage, trying to get just the right kind of swivel in my very narrow hips. And of course all the walking happened on five-inch platform heels. Finally after one hard Saturday afternoon walking and going through the scene over and over and over, something clicked. I’ve always believed in the value of practice, and I guess practice at being sexy can make you sexy.
(I didn’t actually end up “stripping.” I writhed around and walked and crouched and flipped my hair and crossed/uncrossed my legs provocatively. At the end of the scene, the lights went down just as one of the straps came down off my shoulder.)
Performances gave me an absolute thrill—once I get under those stage lights, I just get a rush of adrenaline and forget everything in my life and enter an alternate universe. I yelled, I laughed, I kissed, and I even cried. And the best part was that during performances, including in the strip scene, I often went almost entire scenes without having a “meta” moment—without suddenly realizing, “Oh my god I’m writhing around on this cushion and I have nothing on and I’m saying really inappropriate things.” I didn’t have many of those moments, but instead gave myself completely to the character and the situations. I think in these moments acting became almost like hypnosis or meditation, because I completely lost myself and stopped thinking about all the things I usually think about. Only occasionally would I suddenly remember, “Hey! This is a play and I’m acting. I wonder what those people think of me?”
I think I definitely absorbed some of Alice’s confidence. During the show’s run, I gave my number out to guys and made some interesting phone calls. I walked around backstage wearing almost nothing with no embarrassment. I used to stand at the edge during the free dance part of Nia aerobics class, but now I free dance with no inhibitions. Doing the play made me lose just a little bit of focus from school, which I look at as positive. And playing Alice made me realize some things about myself, which I won’t go into here. Going through the rehearsal process and performances felt like almost like therapy and allowed to me to look at myself from a different perspective. You know how learning another language teaches you a lot about your first language? Well, learning and discovering another person teaches you a lot about yourself.
“Closer” also made me feel like a real actress in a real professional production. I did the kind of work you hear about on “Inside the Actor’s Studio.” I felt like I had made a significant artistic achievement. I don’t know when I’ll get the chance to play another such meaty, juicy, satisfying role.
I had always been skeptical about the influence of confidence over beauty. But “Closer” converted me. During rehearsals, someone (I think my mother) said how pretty I looked and that I even “glowed.” It must be Alice, I said. I finally saw that having confidence on the inside really can make a difference on the outside.
As for stripping, sadly I don’t think I could make a career out of it. I really do not have the figure for stripping. I lack two things that strippers usually find indispensable.

Oh Oprah!

2009-01-07T08:46:00.000-08:00

The other day I happened to watch Oprah. I do not make a habit of watching Oprah, because I am certainly no Oprah fan. I do not belong to the school of “Oprah can do no wrong.” As usual, Oprah talked about her weight and her struggle to lose it. And she decided that her fall of the wagon in the past year and weight gain did not come from any “food issue.” It was a “love issue.”
And I (and my mother) just said “What?” And then Oprah’s diet guru, Dr. Bob, advised us all to ask “Why are you overweight.” Our jaws dropped and we exclaimed, “What!?!?” He did not want some answer like, “I take in more calories than I burn off.” He wants some answer along the lines of “My mummy/daddy/friend/spouse/children/boss/life coach doesn’t love me enough.” He wants to know the emotional reason why you are overweight. Oprah wants to know “what are you really hungry for?” The answer she wants has nothing to do with ice cream, but rather, approval.
Now, I do not have skepticism for over-emoting and mid-level psychological problems like depression and addiction. I firmly believe we should talk more openly about our emotions and how they inform our decisions. I also firmly believe that addiction is a disease. And I do believe that for a small number of people, overeating and becoming overweight can have a psychological source.
But I believe that these people are few and far between. Oprah and Dr. Bob want to ascribe the overweight-ness of most people, at least most women, to emotional problems. For me, this crosses the line into mollycoddling psychobabble. Oprah claims that whenever we eat too much chocolate cake, we really want more love in our lives or need some kind of comfort or want a better relationship with someone. What about the fact that the cake tastes really good and feels good in our stomachs and costs less than fresh vegetables?
When Oprah blames her weight gain on “love issues,” she is being both too hard and too easy on herself. She is being too hard on herself in that she ignores the huge societal sources of obesity—the temptations everywhere, the easy availability of bad food, the constant crunch for time that leaves no room for exercise or healthy eating, the stress of modern life that sends hormones haywire. I think we now have conclusive proof that obesity is an epidemic; it undoubtedly still has a personal element, but it also has public, cultural elements. So when Dr. Bob asks, “Why are you overweight,” why does he not also ask, “Why is most of America overweight?” I honestly don’t believe that the majority of Americans have emotional-eating problems. Of course, I could be wrong. However, I do believe that the majority of Americans have a complex network of problems involving time, money, multinational corporations, and biology that leads to obesity.
But chalking up ballooning weight to “love issues” also sounds like something of a cop-out. Now, I have never had issues with weight, so I admit that I do not know firsthand the frustration. But when talking about the mental/emotional side of weight and body management, Oprah conspicuously leaves out one key mental attribute: willpower. If Oprah has such psychological insight to recognize that when she eats the chips, she really needs balance, then she should also have enough insight to see that she needs to exercise her willpower. Again, I must issue a disclaimer. I happen to have large amounts of willpower and self-discipline and I know that most people, through no fault of their own, do not possess such self-discipline. But I think that Oprah should at least address this very important aspect of character when she talks about emotional eating.
And let me tell you, I have enormous “love issues” and I’m a size 6. I hunger for love and approval, but I do not seek them in ice cream. (I eat ice cream because my mouth loves the taste and texture and my stomach likes the nice cool feeling.) I have problems loving myself, yet I have no problems eating an apple instead of a bag of chips. Maybe I just represent the exception to the rule.
I actually do see one “love issue” related to Oprah’s weight. She does not love herself enough to see that she will never be a size 6. She looks pretty damn good as she is now; she obviously knows how to dress well and has some amazing makeup and hair people. But Oprah, Oprah darling, you do not have the body to ever be a size 6. Love yourself enough to recognize that you, just like everybody else, buy into the same standard of beauty that you will never attain. Should Oprah try to lose 20 pounds? Yes. Should she also admit that she wants to look skinny? Yes.

Harry Potter and the Disappointed Devoted

2009-01-04T15:40:00.000-08:00

Harry Potter and the Disappointed Devoted

I had a request to make my next entry not about myself, but about something cultural or pop-cultural. Unfortunately, the requester has not read Harry Potter. But that’s what I spent most of last week reading.
I took the opportunity of time off to re-read Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. When I first read it in the summer of 2007, it disappointed me a lot. I did lose a night of sleep obsessing over it, but it just didn’t grip me the way all the others had. Did the book simply fail to live up to expectations, or were expectations so astronomically high as to ensure underwhelming? The second time around did nothing to assuage my initial disappointment. I could rant on and on about plot points and some characters not getting a proper death scene. But my disappointment comes from something deeper and indefineable—it simply did not make me weep. I sob through the last 200 pages of Goblet of Fire and Order of the Phoenix. Likewise, vast portions of Return of the King give me shivers up the spine and bring tears to my eyes. But Deathly Hallows, which should be the ultimate emotional catharsis, left me strangely cold.
Deathly Hallows interests me, instead, only intellectually. I think I love Harry Potter so much because it satisfies me both emotionally and intellectually—it operates on several levels (if you can’t tell yet, I like things that operate on multiple levels). It spikes my intellectual and literary curiosity, yet it also appeals and touches on many emotional points. While Book 7 sent major signals flying across my intellectual radar, it didn’t spark any emotional fires. The big reveal, the big Harry-is-a-Horcrux moment, which should have surpassed “No, I am your father” on the earth-shattering scale, instead became simply a bemused, “Oh, yeah, that makes sense according to all the signs.”
I can identify two major problems with the 7th book, and one of them is that it plays a game called Spot the Allusion. “Allusion” is a literary term that describes when one literary work refers to another literary work. It doesn’t mention it by name, but simply “alludes” to it. Reading Hallows for the first time, I at one point went directly to my copy of The Canterbury Tales to look something up (J.K. Rowling confirmed that she had used this source). I also spotted references to the King Arthur legend (a sword in a pond/lake). But then it also made reference to more popular works, including Mary Poppins (the magically enlarged bag) and James Bond (the magic motorbike).
Playing Spot the Allusion will give Harry Potter some academic credit, but it does not really add to the emotional core of the story or morals or characterization. And it may leave readers without degrees in English scratching their heads about the relevance of some plot point. T.S. Eliot’s poem The Wasteland plays the best game of Spot the Allusion ever, and while this has ensured its relevance in college classrooms, it has sapped the poem of any emotional relevance.
My other big problem with Deathly Hallows is that Rowling finally gave in to the urge for allegory. Allegory happens when characters, things, and events within a literary work correspond to characters, things, and events outside the story. The easiest example is The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, which is an allegory of Christ. While Rowling had certainly added symbolism throughout the books, she had not yet made it so annoyingly obvious. But the mere presence of allegory didn’t alone do it for me. What did it was that Rowling unfortunately chose two of the most overplayed allegories: Jesus and Nazis.
Before Book 7, Harry had actually come off as refreshingly un-Christ-like. He didn’t have that insufferable attitude of moral perfection. Rowling had created a wonderfully three dimensional, flawed human. But then he had to go and get himself resurrected. Rowling had made such sensitive choices in her characterization of Harry himself and the moral world surrounding him for the six previous books, the sudden switch to contrived, overt symbolism disappointed me. C.S. Lewis set out to write the Chronicles of Narnia as Christian allegories for children. With my extremely limited religious experience, when I read those books at the age of 7, I had no idea—no idea—of the true identity of Aslan. Maybe my older-and-wiser status has simply moved me beyond allegory.
And after all this time, Voldemort is just your average Nazi? I say average because Rowling so clearly marked Grindelwald as Hitler (complete with ancient symbol stolen for nefarious purposes and a prison with a slogan over the gate). Voldemort himself contents himself with “registering” Muggle-borns and driving people on the run and into secret hiding places, prompting a response from an underground resistance who can never know for sure who is an enemy or a friend. I do have to admit that Rowling did a much better job at creating an atmosphere of uncertainty and secret terror than any WWII movie has ever done. And when done well, that is the power of allegory—it helps us to better understand the happenings in our world when we see them play out in another world.
But the glut of WWII movies and other media and George Lucas’s use of WWII allegory in Star Wars have hardened me to Nazi symbolism. Rowling always made interesting and responsible statements about government responsibility and corruption. She also made some deeply true observations about the nature of evil and created an absolutely engrossing figure in Tom Riddle/Voldemort. But then she has to go and choose the easy way out—because as Steven Spielberg knows, Nazis make incredibly convenient baddies.
And apparently I’m not the only with this lackluster reaction. The internet supports a huge network of Harry Potter fans and arm-chair literary analysts, scattered across several sites with surprisingly professional layouts. But the good people at Harry Potter Lexicon had not updated their page on Horcruxes since before Hallows came out, and it does not have the new information on the ultimate Horcrux. Mugglenet.com published essays on the books (including a particularly good one here), but the supply has dried up. Apparently the whole Harry Potter community was simply waiting for the seventh book to give all the answers, and now don’t want to ask any more questions. We all spent years asking Who? What? Where? When? But now we can start asking the harder, and ultimately more important and rewarding questions: How? and Why?

New Year's Day

2009-01-01T13:36:00.000-08:00

I really should have done this yesterday, but as Bono says (see video above), “nothing changes on New Year’s Day.” Who will care about a few extra hours?
Anyway, 2008 was probably one of the best years of my life. I don’t want to sound like I’m bragging, but I did have a lot of successes and milestones and grew a lot as a person. I got to travel and have other fantastic experiences that helped me to evolve and change. I packed a whole lot into 2008, and I think I can say that I made the most, or at least the majority, of my time.
When 2008 started, I was still in college! And I finally got a class in college that changed my life in a way and changed the way I look at the world. I finally got a class that lived up to all the platitudes on the college brochures. It was a Senior Seminar in English on the subject of Adventure. I really clicked with the material and the concepts (having a crush on the professor didn’t hurt either). It culminated in me writing a 55 page paper on Johnny Cash, the Beach Boys, and Bruce Springsteen. I think this paper really represents my development as a very insightful analyzer of literature. Writing that paper made me immensely proud and I will keep it forever as a symbol of an achievement that reflects both academic and personal interest.
And the Adventure theme became the metaphor for my year. Whenever I found an obstacle in my path, or faced some kind of uncertainty, or even had the opportunity for fun, I said to myself, “Think of this as an adventure.” So I think I will call 2008 the Year of Adventure. You can really use it as a powerful metaphor and mental tool. Once I recognized the elements of Adventure, I started recognizing them everywhere in my own life. I decided to become an Adventurer. I suggest you become one too.
For a week in March, I became a celebrity. The whole Jeopardy madness just exploded. But I’ve got to admit—I really liked it. I definitely could get used to doing interviews and getting recognized. I definitely would not mind a little star treatment. Because I think I showed some star quality! It didn’t give me a big head or make me arrogant, but it did give me a burst of confidence and the little something I needed to make me hold my head high. And the outpouring of enthusiasm and support that people gave me really amazed me. I honestly didn’t make too much of it myself, but my whole attitude changed when I saw the pride that so many people, family and friends and strangers, expressed. I think the refrains of “we’re so proud of you” made me feel even better than winning did. It made me want to win something much bigger just so I could make people even happier than I made all the old folks down at the nursing home. I really don’t want to make too much of it, but it gave me just a glimmering glimpse of something that has long obsessed me—heroism. It was a wild ride and I enjoyed every second of it.
I got to spend the last month of college in London, and all I can say is wow—it honestly was one of the happiest times in my life. Just yesterday I looked back at all my photos and saw again what a great experience I had there. I am so glad I chose to do it. See, I have a problem having fun and doing things for myself, so I almost didn’t go. But it ended up being so much more than I could have imagined. And it gave me a big life goal to shoot for. Getting to live in Britain or just go back for extended periods of time would be a dream come true. On that trip I also got to do something I’ve wanted to do since the age of 11—make the pilgrimage to Liverpool and pay my most heartfelt respects to those four lads. That trip just cemented the feeling I’ve always had that in another life, I was most certainly British.
Pretty much immediately upon my return to the U.S. of A., I graduated from college! How crazy is that? The answer is really crazy. College had gone by so fast for me. I said an easy goodbye to that particular institution itself, because it had never felt remotely like a home to me. Saying goodbye to that era of my life, though, will be much, much harder. I say “will be” because I don’t know if I’ve done it yet. It is, as they say, a process. And looking back now, graduation already seems like a long time ago. I don’t think much about college. I don’t know where those three years went.
After a quick two-week layover in America that saw my brother get married, I went back to Europe! And we had an adventure, traversing through 4 countries in as many languages. My favorite was Spain, where I fancied myself Ernest Hemingway and drank far too much and watched far too much football. It was a great trip and it confirmed the fact that I travel really well. By traveling well, I mean that I don’t get flustered, I can pick up a few essential words, I walk well in crowds, and I have a perfect combination of curiosity and enthusiasm.
The rest of the summer went by too quickly, filled with road trips, barbeques, and unfortunately, a funeral. And then I found myself, seemingly quite by accident, in law school. This should seem like quite a big life move. But I slid into it quite easily, as if it was nothing more than the continuation of school. Some people see law school as LAW SCHOOL, a terrifying experience that represents a huge life change. But I saw it as simply another school, another semester, another subject to master. So far it hasn’t changed me and I really can’t think of too much more to say about it.
The bigger experience of fall 2008 was actually acting in the play Closer. It was simply an incredibly rewarding and fulfilling artistic achievement. I will have to devote an entire post just to the experience of embodying Alice Ayers. But I honestly have to describe it as “life changing.” Not only did Alice help me discover things about myself, but the process made me discover that I love the stage. As only the best experiences do, it left me wanting more.
While all the events and experiences of 2008 make me feel very proud of myself and fill me with positive feelings, they also make me just a little bit afraid. For a long time, I had a paranoia that 8th grade would go down as the best year of my life, because believe it or not, 8th grade represents, for me, a time of extraordinary achievement and personal evolution. I think 2008 has equaled or surpassed 8th grade, but now I have a paranoia that I will never do anything to surpass this year. I mean, when else will I have a year with appearances on national television and two European voyages?
At the end of the Odyssey, the original Adventurer himself, Odysseus, leaves home yet again. As an Adventurer, he cannot just stay put and look back with satisfaction at all the monsters slain and dangers overcome. He doesn’t just put his feet up at home, put his arm around Penelope, and relax. He has to go back out again. And as an Adventurer myself, I have a similar impulse. I cannot just look back at the past year and gloat over how great everything turned out. I want each and every year to turn out as well or even better than this one. I know that something more always hovers just beyond reach waiting for someone to grab it.
I have some kind of drive in me that doesn’t want to have reached my peak at age 21. For years I worried that I peaked at age 13. Maybe I’ll spend the next eight years worried that I peaked at age 21. The only thing to relieve that paranoia is to ensure that each year will bring more great experiences. I already itch for another great role in another great play. I can’t wait to get out of the U.S. again. I don’t make New Year’s Resolutions, but let me suggest a kind of Life Resolution. Imagine yourself as the Man of La Mancha, always reaching for that unreachable dream. Be an Adventurer and never believe that you’ve peaked. Keep searching, seeking, and rambling on towards the next monster, the next great experience, the new cycle of personal evolution, and another great year.

The Monsters and the Critics

2008-12-31T08:10:00.000-08:00

Are you not entertained?

A few days ago, I got the year end issue of the magazine Entertainment Weekly for all their Best-of lists. And I couldn’t believe my eyes. I hadn’t even heard of most of the Best movies of the year, and in the Best music list, I frequently could not distinguish between the artist name and the album name. Now, I consider myself a pretty with-it person; I like to know what’s going on in the world at all levels. I used to read Entertainment Weekly religiously, but stopped recently. Still, I watch a moderate amount of television and spend a fair amount of time on the Internet, including on the review-compiling site www.rottentomatoes.com. Despite my tuned-in status, I had not heard of such movies as Waltz with Bashir, Gomorra, Trouble the Water, Happy-Go-Lucky, Man on Wire, Momma’s Man, The Edge of Heaven, The Class, or Tell No One. Have you ever heard of these? Apparently all these films were released in 2008, but they probably played at only one theater in New York. They are foreign or just insufferably “indie” (a topic for another day). The only remotely recognizable movies on the list are The Dark Knight and Wall-E. So what do these lists mean?

These lists suggest to me the ever widening gulf between “art” and “entertainment.” Artistic movies are reserved for a select few in New York and Los Angeles, while the rest of the country, we stupid imbeciles in the backwaters of the other 48 states, is only good enough for such crap as Mamma Mia and Kung-Fu Panda. Why do we have to have such a large distance between art and entertainment?
I definitely appreciate high-brow art, but I also enjoy Will Ferrell comedies as much as the next person. Back in undergrad, my jaw dropped as professors callously dismissed Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings as being only—oh the horror—popular. These people had built their jobs and lives on analyzing art that belonged to the exclusive province of Ivory Tower academics. The millions of copies of Harry Potter sold obviously meant that it did not deserve academic attention. If so many lowly commoners like it, then obviously it must be idiotic.
But it doesn’t have to be this way. Art and entertainment can exist within one another perfectly well. Exhibit A: Shakespeare. Shakespeare is now the pinnacle of artistic achievement in English-language literature, and yet he packed theaters in his day. Maybe the audiences came just to see bodies strewn across the stage at the end of Hamlet. But somehow Shakespeare found a way to appeal to both queens and illiterate peasants, providing art and entertainment at the same time. Exhibit B: the Beatles. The Beatles achieved unprecedented popularity while raising pop music to the level of art.
And actually, I think that art should aspire to also entertain, and entertainment should aspire to become art. And I think that the best music, film, and literature has elements of both art and entertainment and functions on multiple levels. I could write papers on Peter Jackson’s King Kong. But I could also just sit back and enjoy the show of it. We should not have to make such an all-or-nothing choice between being monsters, those members of the public who wouldn’t know art if it came up and sat on their heads, or critics, those discerning snobs who turn everything into an intellectual exercise. We should be both at the same time.
So who is responsible for the growing disparity between art and entertainment? Is it further evidence of the dumbing-down of America? Is it a massive conspiracy by elite snobs to keep the rest of the population downtrodden and deprived of enlightening art? Have audiences just become lazy in not demanding fulfilling art and entertainment? I don’t know, but when a magazine titled Entertainment Weekly includes on its list a movie that it describes as a “hybrid form of an animated, autobiographical documentary” about Israeli army service, something doesn’t fit.

I borrowed the title of this post from Professor Tolkien, who published an essay called "the Monsters and the Critics." His monsters referred to the ones in Beowulf.

Beatles for Sale: A Re-evaluation

2008-12-27T14:09:00.000-08:00

So I'm still working out how to put music and stuff on here, so for the time being, just Youtube it. Meaning, go to Youtube and enter "Beatles for Sale album."
I recently had the need for some good break-up songs of the “you done me wrong” variety. I set about creating a playlist for my I Pod. Scrolling through my vast library of songs, I found myself looking carefully over the songs on the album Beatles for Sale. I put several songs from that album into my playlist because they had just the right melancholy tone I needed. This led me to listen to the album start to finish. Beatles for Sale has always been pushed into the Beatle background and considered just a “filler”—a crazed record company demands a new album by Christmas and the Beatles desperately compile a lot of covers from their live show and some half-assed, hastily written originals. But I’ve always loved Beatles for Sale, and I think it represents a crucial step in the Beatles’ body of work.
Beatles for Sale came out toward the end of 1964 as the record company needed some new Beatle material to capitalize on the Christmas market. This puts it in between the album representing the height of Lennon-McCartney collaboration and Beatlemania, A Hard Day’s Night, and the album that represents the major turning point in maturation and Lennon-McCartney separation, Help. Coming between these two masterpieces, Beatles for Sale doesn’t get much attention. I will have to sometime put down my thoughts about Help and how Help represents the crucial transition from mop-top pop perfection to the mind-blowing artistic achievements of Rubber Soul and Revolver. But that is a story for later. If Help represents the big transition, then Beatles for Sale represents a mini-transition. John Lennon would get into full Dylan-mode on Help, but it is on Beatles for Sale that he first calls himself a loser. In 1964! Take that Beck!
Beatles for Sale is a nice little country album. The two Carl Perkins covers contribute to that vibe, but so do the insecure, melancholy originals, tales of love gone wrong that would make Nashville proud.
In the opening track, John takes the lead vocal and plays the spurned lover. He comes off a bit stalker-ish actually, as he keeps watch over his girlfriend because she won’t return his calls. Note the desperation and rawness in John’s voice and the Paul McCartney harmonized scream as they cry “I nearly died.”
The next song, I’m A Loser, represents the Great Leap Forward for John’s songwriting. He is actually writing from his own personal feelings, and what’s more, those feelings are full of vulnerability, insecurity, sexual dysfunction, and the acknowledgement of his own fakery. Paul gives one of his great traditional, walking bass lines that would not sound out of place on any country record of that time. Perhaps the most important statement in this song is “I am not what I appear to be.” The façade of Beatlemania was already fading for John. He could already admit, only two years into his career as a pop star, the illusion of it all. He acknowledges here that he has created an image for himself. He of course went on to play with that image for the rest of his life. We get all these messages in 2:30, complete with guitar solo and a nice harmonica break, in a nice countrified package.
“Baby’s in Black” is quite a strange song about trying to go out with a recently widowed woman. John and Paul sing lead together in harmony. Again this song has a twinge of country with John and Paul plaintively pleading “Oh what can I do?” Who else in 1964, or even since, has sung a pop sung about trying to make it with the recently bereaved?
“I’ll Follow the Sun” is my favorite song on this album. Paul played it live on his last tour, and hearing it live really meant a lot to me. It’s a lovely little song with a beautiful melody and an uplifting, positive promise (I’ll follow the sun) that looks ahead to some of Paul’s best ballads like “Blackbird.” I love how John’s slightly darker harmonies join in on the sad lyrical bits, but then Paul sings alone the lines sunny, freedom-affirming lines. The length of this song absolutely gobsmacks me—it’s 1:30. A complete song in 1:30! And yet it still leaves you wanting more. I always press repeat at the end of the song to hear it again.
“Eight Days a Week” is the big single, and it feels a little bit out of place on the album—just a little too ecstatically happy and smile inducing. These early Beatles singles are just impossible to analyze—everything about them somehow works together to immediately create a sing-along, head-bopping moment of pop euphoria.
Let’s admit it. “Every Little Thing” is clearly a throw-away song and by Lennon-McCartney standards, very underwhelming. But it does have a timpani. How many pop songs have timpani? But John actually sings “I know love will never die.” Obviously the boys were tired. I’ll cut them some slack on this one.
“I Don’t Want to Spoil the Party,” on the other hand, is a passable song with a nice beat and a message in keeping with “I’m a Loser.”
“What You’re Doing” is actually quite a cool song, and apparently good enough for its guitar part to merit inclusion in one of the mash-ups on the Beatles Love album. I love the opening drum bit and I dig the sarcasm from, of all people, Paul, as he asks “why should it be so much to ask of you what you’re doing to me.” Paul takes a quite angry and assertive tone, and I for one always love when Paul gets mad.
The covers here represent staples of the Beatles’ live shows going all the way back to the Liverpool Cavern. John gives his best scream in “Rock and Roll Music,” but “Mr. Moonlight” is an unqualified disaster. John’s opening vocal on it always startles me, and not in a good way. The medley of “Kansas City” and “Hey, Hey, Hey” are passable, even if Paul’s country accent is not. “Words of Love” has some nifty little guitar licks and some lovely harmonies. I especially like how they over-pronounce the end words of lines in a really romantic way. I’ve never been able to understand George’s vocals on “Everybody’s Trying to Be My Baby.” It’s alright, but maybe a faster tempo would have helped it.
The best cover is Carl Perkin’s “Honey Don’t,” sung by Ringo. You can feel that the Beatles are having fun on this one. Ringo’s vocal is charming, and don’t you just love his shout-outs to George on his guitar solos? I remember the morning George died going to school and this song coming on the radio precisely because of those shout-outs. The guitar solos are uncomplicated but appropriately backwoods. Ringo performed this song at the Concert for George tribute.
So there you have it. A nice little overlooked treasure for your listening pleasure.

Christmas Reflections

2008-12-25T07:39:00.000-08:00

So it’s Christmas. I’ve always loved Christmas. And I love the traditional aspects of Christmas, or at least my own family traditions. Every December I get out my special reindeer dishes that I’ve had from when I was a small child. And I still use them, despite my mother’s protests. If I had my way, everything would happen just as it’s happened for the past 20 years. I admit to being a creature of habit, but I think my tendency towards habitualness also extends to an appreciation for tradition. And I think that’s where my affection for Christmas arises—I mean, I really couldn’t care less about the religious part. I’m in it for the Christmas tree decorating, the presents, the family gatherings, and the reading of The Polar Express on Christmas Eve. I love the ceremony and ritual of Christmas.
But this Christmas has been different. We broke with tradition. And I can see us breaking even more on down the line. My sister and brother both got married within a year of each other. They have spouses and families of their own now, and greater commitments to the in-laws. They don’t live here anymore, and now that they’re married, we can’t even pretend that they live here anymore. My brother now even has a step-child of his own, and so it would be slightly odd for him to pretend to be a child himself, sitting around the living room in bathrobes taking it in turn to unwrap presents.
On the extended family front, things have changed too. I lost two uncles in the space of nine months. These two uncles happened to be the life of every party, and the ones who actually looked forward to large family gatherings. Caffrey family celebrations have taken a serious hit, and without Daniel and Christopher to cheer us on or little cousins who want to show off all their presents, I foresee the extended family members withdrawing into their own immediate families, who are growing with in-laws and grandchildren of their own.
Of course times are going to change, and you have to roll with them. I don’t handle change well. But I have a feeling I could handle this change better if I had someone of my own. Tradition needs other people; the best traditions are those that you make with other people over long periods of time. And especially at Christmas, we all want someone—someone to kiss under the mistletoe or to hold hands with in front of the fire, or to thank after that really romantic gift. (Now, granted these are all images from commercials and Christmas cards and we should not feel grossly inadequate if we fail to live up to these Norman Rockwell/Hallmark expectations.) But with my siblings coupled and traditions changing, I find myself more than ever wanting a special someone of my own.
And in looking at my own family traditions, I look forward to introducing that special someone to all of them. Bringing someone into a family gathering still seems like something out of the Dark Ages—you bring in the new person and he or she must learn the peculiar family traditions and perform the rituals exactly. If they pass the test and don’t make any gross faux pas, we can let them into the family. Christmas still represents a ritual testing ground. And remember back in elementary school when you had to write a little essay on your holiday traditions? It seems like we use these holiday traditions to take a snapshot of people and families. From what we learn about their Christmases, we can form a pretty good idea of them as people.
So my Christmas wish for this year is to find someone special with whom I can share my traditions or make new ones. Merry Christmas.

Close Encounter of the Regressive Kind

2008-12-24T08:52:00.000-08:00

Yesterday as I walked through the aisles of Shoes on a Shoestring, I found myself face to face with an old middle/high school classmate. I had become "best friends" with this girl for a short time in the 6th grade. Then, spontaneously it seemed to me, she decided that actually, she hated me. I moved on easily enough from that news, but then she did something completely unforgiveable. She started "going out" with That Boy--the one everyone, especially me, wanted. I believe I had expressed some of my feelings about This Boy to her at some time. So I spent a couple of months of eighth grade hiding during lunch so I wouldn't have to see She-who-must-not-be-named holding hands with That Boy. Of course they broke up, and she actually did apologize to me during the Homecoming Dance of freshman year of high school, where I happened to look drop-dead gorgeous, if I do say so myself, and happened to have a male date. During high school I never went out of my way to talk to her, but if I had to talk to her, I was perfectly civil.
I admit that I've fantasized a bit about running into old friends and foes and thought about what I'd say. It should be easy--I am the picture of success. I dress well, I finally figured out how to do my hair, lost the braces and glasses, discovered makeup, and I have plenty to brag about. And especially with this girl, I had an ace up my sleeve (or some other really high value card). I could tell her that, why, actually, yes, I am still in touch with That Boy. I have quite a nice email correspondence with him, and we talk on the phone, and I actually travelled across the country last year to visit him in person. How sweet it would be to see the look on her face at the news that I still call That Boy a friend.
But I didn't tell her this, and I didn't do any bragging. The moment I saw those familiar bug eyes, I quickly brushed past her, and walked quickly (not running!) away. Like getting caught in the eye of the basilisk, I turned to stone--or rather, I turned back into the little insecure, hurt, and humiliated 13 year old girl. Despite all the strides I've made in self confidence and social skills over the years, this girl still struck me dumb. Just like I hid from her little clique in middle school, yesterday I hid behind my sister in another part of the shoe store.
Not to sound like Carrie Bradshaw with her annoying rhetorical questions, but can we ever really move past our childhood insecurities? Why do we have to regress so much back into those roles from which we've tried so hard to move? When all my uncles get together, it's remarkable to watch how they immediately shift back into their childhood roles. And apparently this happens even outside the family context. I've imagined myself walking into a high school reunion in a fabulous dress with a fabulous date, but now I don't know if that's even possible. I mean, I actually really enjoyed high school and had some great times. No one ever teased me or anything, but I was not popular and I'm sure I annoyed many people with my incessant over-achieving.
But recently I've become, at least superficially, much more the picture of the gregarious, hard-bodied, outgoing popular girl. I've definitely moved beyond my middle/high school persona, but it is still lurking somewhere just below the surface, waiting to pop out at any inopportune moment and sabotage me. It popped up yesterday, and even 8 years removed from when my ex-best-friend stole my boy, apparently it still matters. We can move on all we want and grow and change, but those silly adolescent insecurities remain.

2008-12-22T18:34:00.001-08:00

Sexy. Successful. Single.

I recently broke up with a guy. And in the course of the final conversation, I kept waiting for one word to come out of his mouth—one word I knew was coming and that I still hated. Sure enough, out it came. Intimidate. As in, “you intimidate me.”
See, I am, objectively speaking, quite successful. I had a brilliant high school career, went off to a prominent college with academic scholarship in hand, finished in three years, graduated magna cum laude, and went off to law school (that’s still in progress). This guy, while possessing a natural, easy-going intelligence and a lot of wit, did not have much of anything in the way of degrees. I honestly didn’t care, because I found enough other attractive qualities in him. And I did not drone on and on and on about school or my sparkling resume. I honestly would rather talk about music. Or even sports. I actually consciously tried to downplay by academic/professional success. But it obviously mattered to him. He had the typical male response to a young woman more successful than him. He fled.
I honestly do not blame this particular guy or guys in general for this phenomenon. I hate guy-bashing and I don’t like women who do it. Whether by nature—genes hard-wired for competition, fighting, and going out to kill mammoths—or nurture—several thousand years of power and prestige and dominance—guys want to be more successful than women, and they are going to feel threatened by more dominant women. I don’t blame them for being this way, because I truly believe that most guys do not actively choose to be assholes.
Instead, I blame all the people and institutions that told me, as a clearly intelligent young girl growing up, “Go ahead. Break the glass ceiling. Be all that you can be. Guys love strong, successful, smart women.” What they should have told me is, “You certainly have the ability and potential to be successful in this world. But it won’t come without a price. Guys are funny creatures, and they might not take kindly to a girl like you.”
I feel like there was a massive cover-up—that the first few generations of feminists kept the truth to themselves to keep the process going and raise more generations of female over-achievers. If they had let out the secret, then maybe high school girls wouldn’t be so paranoid about getting better grades in math and would slump back into their pre-feminist malaise. I feel like I’ve been duped. They presented to me in my highly impressionable youth, a picture of a “have-it-all” kind of life, with the big job, the handsome husband, and the cute baby. And millions of women have already found out for themselves (hello Jennifer Aniston) how hard it is to attain this picture.
All these sources denied that I might even have to make a choice—between being a successful, high-powered woman and getting a successful, high-powered, non-threatened man. Of course, this is an impossible choice to make. But just acknowledging that it is a real, present choice in the world would make working around it a little bit easier. I’m sick of hearing “Guys love confident, successful women.” If this is not an outright lie, then it is a woefully incomplete statement. “Guys love confident, successful women. As long as they are not more confident and successful than them.” At least then I could avoid feeling like such a failure—sparkling resume, but deadly dull personal life.
Women should thus tone down the rhetoric and start telling the harsh truth—it might be very hard to find a man that is not threatened by you, but you should keep trying. Even though it’s tempting, never play dumb. Just don’t play Oprah.
Guys can also help by trying not to get intimidated or threatened. This will of course present great difficulties for them. But if they can just learn to shut off massive parts of their DNA, then I could get a boyfriend. Any guys out there who can explain? I honestly would love to hear the straight story from a male on this subject.
Of course, in my case, the intimidation factor may come from either success or intelligence. I’ve intimidated both males and females with my intelligence. And the two are not the same. You can always make the decision to talk or not to talk about your academic/professional achievements. But you can’t (believe me I’ve tried) turn off your own natural qualities to the extent that someone won’t notice them.
So what do I want? I certainly don’t want to sacrifice success for sex. But I also really do like guys and I would like one in my life. To accomplish this, I think we just need more open, honest communication, with each side willing to give a little. Guys have to give a little of their balls, and girls have to learn again how to effectively stroke the male ego.

2008-12-22T18:31:00.000-08:00

Statement of Purpose
Why should you read this blog? Why should you waste your precious moments reading something like this? Well, I hope that those moments will not prove a waste, but instead prove entertaining, edifying, and maybe even enlightening.
As one of my heroes, the Dude, would say, “It’s a complicated case. Lotta ins. Lotta outs. Lotta what-have-yous. And a lot of strands to keep in my head, man. Lotta strands in old Duder’s head.” (If you do not know the Dude, go out immediately to your nearest purveyor of entertainment discs and get The Big Lebowski.
I have a lot of strands in my head that need untangling. I have a lot of Big Ideas. And I have the arrogance to think that other people do not have these Big Ideas, or at least don’t have the guts or motivation to put them up on the Internet. I have a lot to say.
But why should listen or care about what I have to say? Well, people often tell me that I’m smart. Objectively speaking, I am probably smart. But you never can trust people, can you? A while ago I made a posting on an Entertainment Weekly blog entry about who should direct the movie version of the Hobbit. I said Guillermo del Toro. Who is now directing the Hobbit? Guillermo del Toro. So there. I know what I’m talking about.
I will not just talk about myself and what I had for breakfast this morning. I will also not just point you to articles you should read, movies you should see, books you should read, music you should listen to. I respect you enough, gentle and dear reader, that I assume that you can make these decisions for yourself. As Brian Cohen would say, “You don't NEED to follow ME, You don't NEED to follow ANYBODY! You've got to think for your selves! You're ALL individuals!” (To see the response you would give to this statement, see Life of Brian.)
What I will do is give you some of the musings in my head. Sometimes funny, sometimes sad, sometimes political, sometimes pop-culture, sometimes in incomplete sentences and sometimes in complete. I will talk about things I notice and things I found confounding and confusing. I do not know yet how much I will talk about my personal life, or lack thereof. It depends on if I actually get a personal life in the near future.
You should read this because I have a very low self-esteem and need my ego stroked. And because I am gorgeous, talented, funny, witty, lithe, skinny, intelligent, wonderful, perceptive, knowledgeable, easy-going, friendly, conscientious, compassionate, beautiful, and of course, self-deprecating.