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Monday, December 29, 2003
"The strong objection of the "Puritan" kind is really not to the deceptiveness of surface but to its irrational power, which Postrel is unnecessarily enjoining us to rejoice in. Those who formulated the old objections feared loss of the power of reason, and especially of language, both sanctified in much earlier days as exclusive avenues to the power of truth. But surfaces are not engaged in deception, their aim is to be loved for themselves; and appearance is one form of truth, as the makers and lovers of art have known from the beginning."
-- Anne Hollander, reviewing Anne Postrel's The Substance of Style: How the Rise of Aesthetic Value Is Remaking Commerce, Culture, and Consciousness in The New Republic Online, featured review of the day for December 25, 2003 at Powells.com.
For those of you who have been following my pedantic, on-going struggle with the line (or lack thereof) between fact and fiction, this closing paragraph of Hollander's review came as a kind of (not-unpleasant) surprise. I had just spent the better part of half an hour reading her carefully thought-out criticism of Postrel's uncritical celebration of design for design's sake (something which I, good modernist that I remain, abhor), and was fully expecting it to build to a high modernist excoriation of pastiche, irony and rampant global marketing. Instead, Hollander scolds Postrel for tardiness, stating the obvious, and protesting too much -- her celebration of surface presupposes a denigration that has not been the case for centuries -- but ends up essentially agreeing with her: appearances should be celebrated for their own sake. But what struck me most about Hollander's deft, simple closing statement was the recognition that the equation of surface with deception comes out of an historical privileging of language as the sole path to reason and truth. More than ever, in the present-day conflation of content and packaging, surfaces are not deceivers, they (like most of us) just want to be loved, and truth comes through many guises.
I suppose in my first career as visual artist, I must have somehow intuited or internalized what now seems like a minor revelation. The only explanation I can come up with for my lapsed faith in the visual is that in the blossoming of a third potential career (that of writer) I have become overly-enthusiastic about a rediscovered attachment to written and spoken language. Which is not to say that I have given up on the communicative possibilities of visual expression, but only to affirm that I'm no longer content to smile contentedly in the face of great beauty. No, for better or worse, I must articulate.
Which reminds me of a Buddhist story that's been banging around rootlessly in the recesses of my brain for years. Two monks are watching the sunset (I know this sounds like the beginning of a bad joke -- maybe that's where it came from!). One says, "What a beautiful sunset," to which the other replies, "Yes, but what a pity to spoil it by saying so."
But then I think of my grandmother who, since her stroke, has been living for nearly 4 years in a bed in a nursing home, unable (or unwilling, it isn't clear) to speak or move. While my aunt and mother are convinced that she responds to yes/no questions by blinking her eyes, I have maintained (cynically and often, angrily) that blinking is a natural and unconscious reflex: it happens anyway. My grandmother may be having the most beautiful, lucid, original thoughts there in her hospital bed, but how would any of us know?
It's my grandmother who has convinced me that I need to write, to share something of what I think, feel, experience. I suppose sharing was always an aspect of my visual work as well, only I didn't feel it quite so keenly. It was much more muddled under the requirements and expectations of school, peers, illusions of grandeur. The nice thing about writing now is that it's not motivated by money or self-aggrandizement -- although it would be dishonest to say there's not a little bit of that in it, too -- but by a general excitement about language and the possibilities of distilling something ephemeral and personal down to a form that other people can understand.
1:20 PM
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Monday, December 22, 2003
Rufus Wainwright's December 19 show at the Warfield was by turns luminous, silly and utterly moving. The last show of this leg of a tour supporting Want One (an unfortunately bifurcated title, it's the first CD of a double album -- Want Two follows next year), the evening was marked by an air of celebration and achievement, as well as gleeful sloppiness and fatigue.
Wainwright is a consummate charmer: rock star, cabaret crooner and cheeky, smart-ass jokester all rolled into one. He gamboled through his set, blithely mumbling and improv-ing his way through lyrics he clearly forgot, and inserting irreverent meta-commentary between phrases. In the middle of the sample of Ravel's Bolero that pops over the climax of Oh What a World, he added, "I had to call the family." While delivering non-stop song after well-crafted song, he's expert at chatting up the audience and making you feel like a conspirator in some grand, private joke -- a joke you're glad to be let in on. For the world Wainwright constructs in his music is emotionally nuanced, self-mocking and psychically resilient. It allows you to plumb the depths of family drama, love, lust and disillusionment, laugh through your tears, and then saunter down 14th Street with a wry, beatific smile on your face.
It was temporary entry into this world, escorted by Wainwright's endearing personality and stream-of-consciousness non-sequiters that held the show together. Otherwise, obvious signs of fatigue were evident: certain vocal lines sounded strained and thin, and Wainwright was clearly just powering his way through some of the more difficult sequences. The beat lagged on a few of the up-tempo numbers, which I expected to be more rather than less potent in a live performance. On the other hand, I gained a new appreciation for the most straight-ahead rocker on the new album: Go or Go Ahead had always been my least favorite song, but live, its gradual build and soaring climax came on like a super nova.
Being the unrepentant sentimentalist that I am, my favorite moments were Rufus alone, spotlit at the piano. Pure cabaret, they conjured romantic images of smoky, melancholy bars and dissolute demi-mondes. But thankfully, there's always something to pull you back to the absurdity of 21st century reality, to keep all this naked beauty honest: "My phone's on vibrate for you," is the ultimate expression of modern-day longing.
10:45 PM
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I shopped, planned menus, baked biscotti, and mailed cards, which as part of the on-going project called "new-and-improved-West-Coast Sharon," should have been enough get me in the holiday spirit. But this year, they all felt like empty gestures, obligations to fulfill because I did them (and felt good about doing them) last year. This year, I thought if I just did some holiday-like things, I would feel holiday-like, eventually: generous, expansive, happy. But I only felt anxious.
But what would the holidays be without anxiety? Will people like the gifts I give them? What if I can't remember the names of my cousins' ever-increasing offspring? Will my biscotti arrive at its destination before it goes stale? What is the meaning of the holidays when people are puking and shitting in the streets because they have nowhere else to go? Any neurotic worth her salt is bound to ponder these and myriad other burning and petty questions for weeks leading up to and following the holidays. In my case they manifest not so much as the discreet, articulated questions above, but a continually mounting sense of dread, like being caught in a slow, ineluctable undertow.
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That said, Martha Stewart (loathe though you are to love her) makes some mean biscotti. I customize the recipe a tad by adding chocolate chips and rolling the dough in sugar instead of flour, which makes for a crisper (and sweeter) crust.
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If I can get excited about biscotti, then the holiday spirit must not have deserted me entirely. Then again, it IS biscotti...
I think last year I just felt grateful to have survived the year in my new environs, and so really felt like celebrating, or at least sharing good will yadda yadda. This year, inexplicably, I just want to curl up with a book and hide. That's the thing about holidays, they don't always arrive at convenient moments. At any rate, the thing I learned this year is that you can't force it (well, you can, it's just no fun). Sure, for the un- and anti-religious, the holidays are a good time to get back in touch with people, and tell them how much you love them, but if you don't really feel that way, then what good is the greeting? Which is not to say that I no longer love the people I have professed to love in the past (with a few exceptions), just that you should really only say it when you mean it, and not just because everyone else is saying it, which seems horrendously, stupidly obvious now, and only goes to show how much my holiday malady has quashed any hope of rational thought.
That said, I did have an unexpectedly magnificent time with my sister and parents this pre-xmas weekend. Despite the SF blackout and rain, we indulged in a luxurious and delicious meal at Foreign Cinema and shopped Hayes Valley and Union Square til my toes hurt, but shopping with Diane is always edifying -- she's a pro. I was proud of her for resisting the $200 Karim Rashid dog bed, though. And there was that one moment when the strains of Rufus Wainwright's "La Complainte de la Butte" wafted, inexplicable and beautiful through Union Square. So I guess there's still some hope for this year's holiday.
4:51 PM
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Monday, December 15, 2003
I feel like I should spend a little time writing about my cat, Figgy, since I have failed to do her due justice in writing up until this point (and maybe not even now). She's recovering from kitty hepatitis (all those years of intravenous drug use, no doubt), on two different medications. Oliver says she's just old (13), and this stuff just happens when animals get old.
Oliver also says that I have guilt and mommy issues. A week and a half ago, the vet told me that a hairball Figgy could never quite seem to produce could be a cough, which could be asthma. Just like a guilty mommy, I immediately rush home and give the house a thorough cleaning and airing out and contemplate dropping $400 on an ionic air purifier. I don't. I'll wait for the complete results of her x-ray. And did I mention that she's also over-weight? She now eats only 1/3 cup of dry cat food and is supposed to exercise for 1/2 hour per day. Suffice to say there are many grumpy kitty cries every morning at 6am. And blind rattling. She has discovered that the metal mini-blinds make excellent people-awakening sounds when poked at with a paw. Between that, knocking things off the night table, and the raspy and assiduous licking of a single spot, preferably on the tender part of an arm or chin, she's pretty much got me on her schedule. It must seem a poor reward to only get 1/2 of a 1/3 (1/6!) of a cup of dry kibble in return for such enterprising efforts.
I do worry that Figgy feels unfulfilled. She's smart, and quickly tires of the usual kitty games: string, feather on a stick, feather on a string on a stick, ball with rattle inside. After about 5 minutes, she just sits there, stabbing laconically at toys only when they happen to pass within paw's reach, or just staring at me, like "You must be kidding." But she's especially fond of sparkly plastic and anything with adhesive on it, which she will chew and lick (and swallow!) 'til there's nothing left but shreds. She is also fond of that skinny curling ribbon you scrape with the scissors. And the emulsion on photographs. I'm convinced these obsessions are no good for her, and are perversions of some more primal instinct -- perhaps the one that makes cats eat grass only to throw it up. Or maybe she just needs more roughage. Or is just bored and getting high from the glue.
When Figgy first got sick, we used to struggle a lot over her medication. There were all kinds of pills, pastes and potions that had to be jammed down her gullet, with either finger or eye dropper, morning and night. One paste in particular (I can't even remember what it was for now) had to be smeared on the roof of her mouth, an operation which not only made her gag (all pill-administration requires gagging), but resulted in copious amounts of sticky drool, which she then proceeded to drape in lacy, bubbling threads all over the couch, under the bed or into the closet.
But now, years later, she is resigned. Granted, there are no more nasty pastes or runny anti-biotic liquids. Just 1/2 of a discreet white pill every morning, and a slightly larger one on Mondays. I used to have to straddle her, holding her between my knees just to pry her mouth open and insert the pill, hoping I got it far enough back that she would swallow it when she gagged instead of sending it flying across the room. Now I just tilt her head back and pull the top of her mouth upward, pop in the pill and let the gagging do the rest.
The vet tells me that if he decides he needs to treat her asthma, there are three options: 1) the pill she is already taking on Mondays and which we have been trying to wean her off of for months (not acceptable), 2) another pill whose side effect increases appetite (she's on a diet), or 3) a spray inhalent that comes with its own little kitty mask. I would place the mask, with spray bottle attached, over her nose and mouth and spray the medicine into the mask, hopefully no more than once a day. Poor Figgy.
3:00 PM
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Thursday, December 11, 2003
I think I've had my first episode of writer's block. I hesitate to call it that, since there's some debate as to my self-identification as a "writer," but as Oliver says, in one of his Yoda moods, "You don't call yourself a writer, you become one." (shades of "there is no try, only do.")
Anyway...it was a curious feeling, following a particularly productive period where I felt like I had terribly important things to say about everything from ice cream to Hollywood musicals (then again, is there really that much space in between?) and was trying to "hone my craft" and focus on "my voice" and word choice and all manner of writerly concerns. But then along came Thanksgiving. Now it would be unfair to blame the "writer's block" completely on post-holiday depression (or post-pig-out-induced coma), but it was a strange temporal coincidence to say the least.
Suddenly, I found myself with absolutely nothing to say. About anything. I didn't even feel like writing about food (mon dieu!), even though I had just consumed large quantities of excellent quality. It felt like being sealed in a windowless white box, or that completely empty white space that characters in the Matrix (as well as countless TV commercials) use to select weapons, clothes, cars, what-have-you. Except there were no endless rows of anything, just empty white space. I still had to pantomime and feign all of my usual daily behaviors: waking, eating, washing, shlepping, grinning and bearing, etc. without the comfort or specificity of actual real live points of reference. It was sort of like acting out a play in a vaccuum; Marcel Marceau in outer space.
Then Oliver-Yoda suggested I start a blog. And that has made all the difference. :)
9:19 AM
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This morning walking to work, mixed with the plaintive strains of Rufus Wainwright, I overhear part of a conversation:
Man: "...we were having trouble at work."
Woman (knowingly): "oh..."
Man: "But I didn't get laid off. I lucked out."
And then both of them break into a nervous, relieved laugh, and it strikes me how it's become so commonplace to approach a career as you would a slot machine, maybe, or at best, blackjack. It's all in the luck of the draw, being in the right place at the right time (or at least not in the wrong place at the wrong time). Almost three years after the dotcom bust, a job is not so much a given right as a happy windfall, which still makes everyone more nervous, but also more grateful, I imagine, when fortune happens to smile.
8:59 AM
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Wednesday, December 10, 2003
I woke up this morning to the news that a total of 15 children were killed by the U.S. in two separate bombings in Afghanistan this weekend. What kind of war on terror requires the bombing of entire villages in the search for one man, who, if anyone had asked, left the village two weeks ago? As I listened in front of the bathroom mirror, all I could see was that unforgettable black and white photo of nine-year-old Phan Thi Kim Phuc, screaming, running naked down the road in Vietnam.
2:33 PM
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All those fleeting thoughts that one day might amount to something if I could only remember to write them down...
9:15 AM
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