Charlie Kaufman and Richard Kelly

Remaining immersed in various forms of art is a good idea for any writer or artist.  As I've said before, I think, a writer cannot hope to create anything worthwhile, or at least anything fulfilling his potential, if he writes in a vacuum.  A writer needs external stimulation so that his skill and imagination constantly receive new content.  Writing always will assure that a writer's skill and imagination do not rust, but the external stimulation assure that his writing does not repeat the same boring formulations over and over again.  I wish I could insert a footnote here because repeating is not necessarily a bad thing: if a writer has a core principle, belief, creed, or whatever, every word will be a repetition despite new themes and characters and ideas, and that is good; but repetition otherwise is the worst.  Boring repetition produces one-hit wonders, or worse, no-hit-wonders-that-weren't-actually-ever-wonderful. 

Some of my posts have been about the things that I read for that stimulation but I have yet to discuss what I watch for that stimulation.  Like with everything I do, I much prefer stimulation that won't also dumb me down.  Pure entertainment is good every now and then, but a) I do my best not to make it a habit and, b) there are plenty of sources of pure entertainment that are also clever, or at least not ridiculous in some way.  So Twilight, or anything similar, is out because it's silly and encourages silly notions and behavior, especially in romantic relationships; most reality shows are also out because they aren't interesting, at least not anymore when the whole world seems occupied by "reality" shows, often subject you to various levels of stupidity, and prey on the listlessness and typical American desire to be unthinking, lazy, obnoxious, and self-serving; and anything that contains too much violence, especially comedies where violence has no place (violence is NOT funny, yet the trend nowadays is to include violence as often as possible in comedy films), usually shut me off.

What, then, do I watch?  Well, I'll point you to two film writers/directors whose films should be seen and enjoyed by all.

First of all, I think that Scorsese is the best director out there right now.  I can't comment on Kubrick or Hitchcock or any other American director working primarily before 1980 because, honestly, I have not seen many American films prior to that date.  I'm only 25, for goodness sakes.  I'm working on it, but still, so far most films made prior to 1980 that I've seen are foreign.  Don't ask me why that is, but that's been my habit heretofore.

Ok, Richard Kelly.  Based on the rules of good literature I should mention Kaufman first because I listed him first in the title, but I decided that I'd rather leave him for last because he's so brilliant.  Richard Kelly is perhaps most famous for Donnie Darko.  As with all his films, he both wrote and directed the film with the scary bunny on the cover.  Without question Donnie Darko is my favorite movie of all-time and may always be for its themes developed in a mind-bending way.  Other films you might know him by are The Box and Southland Tales.  Each film is much like the others in that Kelly likes to play with your head, create a sense of mystery, and throw in a bunch of symbols and things that he himself admits he doesn't know the meaning of.  I think of the poet Dylan Thomas saying that he wrote poetry by placing words together that sounded good with the others and worried about the meaning later.  That's the type of poetry I love most and I guess it's also the kind of film that I love most.  I am thrilled with entertaining images but my mind is always working making connections or simply allowing itself to be provoked.

Charlie Kaufman is perhaps the most brilliant writer to enter the film industry.  Usually the director deserves most of the credit, if not all, for the quality of a film, but Kaufman reverses that trend by only screenwriting.  You might know him for a lot of films: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Being John Malkovich, or Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (which includes one of my favorite actors as the main character, Sam Rockwell).  But his best films, in my humble opinion, that absolutely must be seen are Adaptation and Synecdoche, New York.  I can't really describe these films except to say that they are equally entertaining as the other films but far more intellectual, unique, and just plain brilliant.  Really I can't urge the viewing of these latter two films enough, particularly Adaptation.  Watch all his films, though, and your life will never be the same.  Seriously.  Kaufman's writing is so creative that you, like the characters in his films, will not be able to think of reality the same way again.  Indeed, all of his films question what makes up reality, what makes up our identity, what is the meaning of life, without ever asking any of these questions as in one of those totally uninteresting films whose sole purpose is to ask some lofty question but lacks any aesthetic qualities.  No, Kaufman is like a philosopher who writes novels: rocking your mind and you don't even know it.  You are too caught up in the characters and story and what will happen next to realize that the texture of life is being re-molded. 

Of course, you can watch a Kaufman or Kelly film and simply think afterward, "Wow, that was good," or simply, "That was good, I liked it," and move on.  Or you might ask some questions about the film hoping that you can make sense of it, and then either make sense of it and move on or conclude that it doesn't make sense and that's stupid.  Well, for one thing, I don't think it's stupid to include symbols left and right that don't necessarily have a singular focus, as long as it's not overdone or too obvious or doesn't go anywhere.  Therefore I don't think we should simply "make sense" of a piece of art or demand that art make sense.  If the art is art, then it is art.  Easy as pie.  And if the art is art, then all you can ask of it is that it brings you aesthetic joy or mental provocation.  Both of these, but particularly mental provocation, are what I look for in the things that I watch.

Obviously, being a huge Boston sports fan (in the case of college sports, I'm a Big East fan, NOT a Boston College fan), so I watch a lot of sports.  Otherwise, though, most of what I watch is intended to experience art that is art that can stimulate my mind for better writing.  Even if I weren't a writer, however, my tastes would be the same because I hate the prospect of a dumbed-down society like that in Wall-E, which unfortunately seems inevitable, even with my great genius entering the world.

Olympic Fervor

Should I continue clarifying that this Alexandra person I keep referring to is my friend?  Or shall I simply say, "Alexandra this and that," and everyone will know who I'm talking about?  I think it's clear that she has some significance in my life and great influence, whether she realizes it or not, on my thoughts and writing and whatever else.

So it didn't really surprise me that, when I was sitting around watching London's Opening Ceremonies of the Olympics and thinking that I wish I had someone to share the experience with, Alexandra was also watching the ceremonies and quite excited about it.  Turns out my emotions are rather finicky lately because if she weren't watching, I would have been depressed.  I would have been depressed because, a) I wouldn't have had someone to share my titillation over Kenneth Branagh's presence, or someone to say to me, "Kenneth is bad ass right now," and, b) the Olympics are more than a long and diverse sporting event to me.

For one thing, I believe that an artistic temperament is naturally inclined to love the Olympics.  At the same time, I can imagine Hank Moody from Californication being mortally opposed to the Olympics and, if asked why, wryly saying, "Why would I watch a bunch of better-looking and more fit men running around in tight suits or whatever when I can just sit at home and get laid by pretty women?  Why put in all the extra effort?"  Of course, Hank Moody would probably have thrown in some f* bombs in there, but the sentiment doesn't change.  But for everyone else the Olympics are special because they exhibit the height of individual and team competition on an international stage of unity.  Competition and significance, and feeling like you're a part of it because, well, your country is represented after all... even if you're an anarchist like me, that matters.  If none of that matters, then you can still at least appreciate and greatly appreciate the artistic wonder of the ceremonies, the Opening Ceremonies especially.  Who doesn't want to watch, with a billion other people, Kenneth Branagh be a bad ass, J.K. Rowling overcome her fears and read some poetry in front of a billion people, incredible set pieces and tremendous coordinated dancing like So You Think You Can Dance? and whatever other shows will and can never match, singing from little kids and a whole nation together led by Paul McCartney himself that American Idol will never match, and faces of intense pride and accomplishment representing and parading for an entire nation?   You won't find the brilliance of the Olympics anywhere else.  Well, ok, maybe the World Cup in football (soccer), but it's a struggle finding American-borns my age or older that care about that.

Why am I writing this?  Well, I guess I'm writing because I'm a writer and I'm tired of the tastes of people in this country, especially, and more and more around the world.  We prefer to watch reality TV and, ironically, miss out on real emotions and uplifting and brilliant events; we watch only the most explosion-oriented and action-packed movies around and rarely even hear of, let alone watch, The Tree of Life (as crappy as it may have been), the entire corpus of Charlie Kaufman, The Last Temptation of Christ, or something like Southland Tales, all movies with critical acclaim, incredible directing and screen-writing and artistic excellence, and I've only mentioned American-made contemporary films; we read Twilight, Harry Potter, and The Hunger Games and think we are cultured--nothing against any of those (well, I can't stand Twilight or The Hunger Games, but that's besides the point)--and then have the audacity to proclaim that Moby Dick and The Scarlet Letter are not good books.

Not good books!  Look, I don't care if you hate Melville's master-piece or Hawthorne's, although I think his other works are far better, but you have to recognize and respect greatness, even if you don't particularly like it.  That, more than anything, is the issue.  "The Olympics aren't as fun to watch as, say, Big Brother, so nevermind."  Unfrigginbelievable.  Don't like Shakespeare? Get over it, he's had more influence on the shape of your life than you probably have.  So really this post has very little to do with the Olympics.  The indifference some people around me have shown to the Olympics, though, is devastating to me because it is a representation of how terribly wrong our society has become in our approach to and understanding of art and its significance.

Perhaps this is why I think artists are the greatest form of person in the world.  Might want to get out your cockiness meter for that last statement.  Some artists can be total jerks... but in general artists can differentiate our intense passions and emotions from an appreciation for a thing.  I LOVE Oscar Wilde, but is he the best playwright?  No, not even in the top five of the English language--top ten maybe.  I absolutely loathe Hemingway, but must I respect him?  Definitely, and I've read lots of his works, knowing that, truly, I'd be less of a person and less of an intellect and less of a writer if I decided to stop reading Hemingway after For Whom the Bell Tolls.  And, because I respect greatness enough and know that it makes me better being around it and reading it, I, unlike many, actually know that Hemingway's title comes from a John Donne poem.

All I'm saying is, developing more of an artistic temperament would be good for all of us.  What I mean by that may be stereotypically described as, "just doing whatever is pleasurable."  But an artistic temperament, as I've been trying to say, has such an expansive understanding of pleasure it's not funny and very funny all at the same time.  I receive great pleasure from the new Batman films, though I wish they were filmed differently, and 300, but I also love films like Ordet (look it up); and I find great pleasure even in the things that I hate but still respect, like any book written by E.M. Forster or any poem written by e.e. cummings or Robert Frost.

So let's get on changing how we find pleasure and then work on where we find it.

Inspiration

My last post included a little tidbit on the common perceptions of artists and writers.  Mainly what I want to focus on is the very wrong perception that we only work when inspiration hits us, as if we sit around doing a narrow range of activities from nothing to smoking pot or getting drunk.  Basically what this perception amounts to, especially in this country where most Americans are diseased with a work-complex,  is that artists and writers are lazy, useless to society, and generally a waste.  If you are reading this and don't share these conclusions, then great; but my hunch is that the vast majority of people, even those who appreciate the arts and perhaps dabble in artistic endeavor themselves, still think that something called inspiration does or should drive all artistic work.

That's just plain wrong or misguided, whatever you want to call it.  Too many self-proclaimed or aspiring artists/writers, poets and painters especially, say that they work when they are feeling inspired.  And then if they are not feeling inspired then they don't do anything.  I know a lot of these people and, quite frankly, I do not like them because they are the reason artists of all kinds are poorly perceived.

There is nothing wrong with writing or painting as a hobby.  If your artistic work is just a hobby, though, then please, when I say I am a writer, do not reply, "Oh yeah, I write poems every now and then when I feel inspired."  Frick in the balls that upsets me.  If you meet an architect, you don't say to them, "Yeah, I build little toy houses as a hobby every now and then when I feel inspired."  If you somehow meet a professional football player, the last thing you should say to them is, "I played football in middle school and still play a pick-up game every now and then when we're all feeling inspired."  Who cares!!

Ok, "who cares" with two exclamation points might be a little harsh.  The point is, there is very little comparison between someone's hobby and someone else's profession or career, even if it's the same activity.  You make clay pots every month with the pottery club, you say?  Great.  Does that mean your pots are sold at the Pottery Barn?  I don't think so.  Obviously there is very little actual pottery sold at that store, but I'm making a point here.  You could be very good at this hobby of yours but it does not make you a writer, painter, sculptor, poet, or artist of any kind.  As long as you think of it as something that you do as a hobby or every now and then or just whenever you feel inspired, there will always be a large gap between what you're doing and what the career artist is doing.

Poetry is perhaps the easiest of all the arts to pretend at.  Many people think it takes just a few minutes to write a poem, and then they shop the poem around as if it's the next "On a Grecian Urn" or "God's Grandeur" or William Carlos Williams.  Oh silliness.  Real poets, the career poets, agonize over poems.  It's fairly common that a poet will spend all day writing a poem and then be unable to sleep at night questioning whether they should add a semi-colon, or something. 

An artist or writer cannot afford to wait for inspiration or for the next word from a muse.  Writing is my life, I must write to live.  That means that I write with or without inspiration.  By God I hope I have inspiration, motivation, determination, and whatever other word you can think of that fits, but if I don't then I must write anyway.  And if I simply cannot write then you will find me in serious arrears.  If I cannot write then I am thinking about what to write, how I can't write, what's wrong with me that I can't write, whether I'll ever succeed, oh dear God why am I such a failure!  If I cannot write then I also cannot just move on to something else.  Writers may have other jobs but they are not fall-back options or anything of the sort, they are merely meant to keep the writer afloat to be a writer.  When a writer has another job they often work themselves to death because when they are not 'working,' they are doing the real work of writing.  This is even more true if the writer or artist is also a born priest or architect.  Oh what little time they must have to sleep!

I encourage writing or something other artistic activity as a hobby for everyone, but please do not think that writing is simply a hobby that I or anyone else have made into a life.  Writing is my life.  I am writing all the time, even when I am not.  Again my friend Alexandra, who is a far better artist than I ever will be, put it well when she told me not to worry about the times when all I felt like doing was reading or traveling because even then my mind was writing.

In a way I think that I create my own inspiration and my own muse.  The artist's mind needs training like anything else.  Since I have trained my writer's mind 'inspiration' may come to me more than others.  That does not make me lucky, it simply makes me a writer.  Hence there is another difference between a writer and someone with a hobby: I create my inspiration through training and keeping at it, and others wait for inspiration.

Basically this post is one big act of self-praise, so feel free to kneel before me whenever you so desire.

Writers Write

It should be fairly obvious that a writer writes.  That's part of the definition.  I've seen a couple of movies recently, though, with portrayals of writers that aren't entirely flattering and certainly don't suggest at all that writers do much writing.  Limitless begins with the main character trying to write a novel but suffering from what you might call writer's block as he just sits in his apartment throwing a ball around or at his computer not typing anything, and then taking a break after an hour of doing nothing to get a drink; You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger shows throughout the falling confidence of a married man that doesn't seem to do anything productive or positive throughout the entire movie and then has to resort to stealing another man's book because, well, it's his last resort.  In the latter movie we at least hear that the man has published four novels but none of them seem to have received much acclaim and his stock with the publishers appears to have run out.  Neither movie, then, would give you the impression that writers write.  Instead it would seem that writers are silly creatures with little to no prospects in life that, even if they were successful, wouldn't add much to society anyway.

No doubt the perception of what a writer does bothers me.  When people ask me what I hope to do with my life I am quite timid, though it was only a few months ago that I boasted a confidence level that neared or topped the heights of cockiness.  I do not want to say that I intend to be a writer and then have the person think that means that I don't intend to do anything with my life, that I'm sitting around, that I'm not at all useful to myself, a potential family, or to anyone they could imagine.  If only I could restore my confidence to insist that my writing will be useful.  Most writing is useful in some way, if only that it is found to be meaningful.  But I need to re-convince myself that it is useful before I can persuade others.

A nice breakfast with Joel and Megan and some other UMC pastor friends this morning helped remind me, though, that a writer writes.  For now I can't worry about what the perception of a writer is.  I certainly can't worry about what the perception of John Lucy is.  Pondering either thing too long would no doubt be crippling, it has already been crippling for a little while.  Rather, I need to just focus on writing, on putting the time in, on getting my fingers moving on the keyboard and the notepads.  I need to stick to my routines of writing out introductions, essays, and short stories by hand; to writing ideas, lines, and outlines on scrap pieces of paper or my handy-dandy moleskin notebook given to me by my great friends the Ulmers; to writing at least a couple of letters by hand every week.  If I want to be a writer to hopefully improve the lives of others, I must write, and write and write and write.