When I looked outside my windows this morning, or, really, a little into the afternoon, it looked mildly cold. Wet from an earlier rain, the first of browned and oranged leaves pasting the ground, like the oversized paper ones that plastered my kindergarten and grade school halls in my forever-fall Halifax memories.
My espresso grounds were old, and I wanted caffeine before I tackled the mountain of dishes I had vowed to myself and my girlfriend I'd clean in the morning. She made dinner, I do the dishes. It's only fair, and I rarely accomplish anything before 4pm anyway. A good goal, baby steps, to start a mite sooner.
So groundless and caffeineless, I threw on my oversized cardigan I got as a Christmas gift last year, which I love in a "I can imagine myself being an old guy, maybe a professor, but definitely a writer" sort of way, and shuffled off to the corner Starbucks, lost in remembering teaching theatre to kids in similarly autumn leaf-adorned kindergarten and grade schools, thinking of all the Starbucks cups I drained waiting for the trains to get there.
Inside, the Asian-American barista took my order, and while she did, half asked her Hispanic-American colleague, who started to make my coffee, what the word for "inch" was in Spanish. He earnestly shook his head, and said he didn't know. I said I didn't think there was a word for "inch," because both Spain and Mexico use the metric system, which, I then felt necessary to mention, doesn't use inches.
If I could measure seconds in centimeters, we swam an Olympic sized swimming pool together, entirely doubting each other's knowledge and education, before she smiled pleasantly and handed me a croissant. America, it seems, goes on for another day.
Tuesday, October 8, 2013
Sunday, October 6, 2013
Felina/Finale, the Uncertainty Principle Breaking Bad Thinkpiece
***If you can't tell, this is going to involve major Breaking Bad spoilers. So, don't read any of this if you don't want to know what may or may not have happened in the finale.***
So.
There exists on the internet these days a certain subgenre of thinkpieces that have generated themselves all summer at an exponentially rabid/rapid pace. This is, of course, the Breaking Bad Thinkpiece.
And of course, now that the series is over, and we've had a few days to digest the experience and implications of the finale, these kind of thinkpieces are replicating themselves with wild abandon.
I am throwing my hat into this well-traveled ring because I am, like all other writers of these thinkpieces, an unabashedly devoted fan, I can't help but have strong opinions about it, and I was honestly fairly disappointed with the story of the finale. Not the production of it, nor the experience of it entirely, even, but the story, and its implications for the series as a whole.
I went onto Gchat and spent a few hours in post-show analysis over several days with my best friends. I gorged myself on every review of the finale, every point of view I could find about what had happened. I just couldn't decide what I felt. What I was settling for. What I wish had happened.
It was sincerely difficult to articulate, because I felt like I was missing something that maybe I wasn't even really supposed to catch on to. My brain, which always tries to make things the most complicated they can be, couldn't figure out how to reinterpret this fairly-straight-forward and ultimately-semi-victorious hail Mary pass by Walter White, which, miraculously, it seems, all works out in his favour. Is it really ending this simply?
Walt dies on his own terms. He finally tells Skylar the truth, that he did this all for himself, because he loved it, because he was good at it, because it made him feel alive. He ends Heisenberg's career in an epic badass rain of jerry-rigged machine gun murder, he finally refuses the seduction of MORE money after he has safely used his fearsome alter ego to threaten his former colleagues/privileged khaki clowns into ensuring the money he DID save from calamity will end up in his family's care after all, and he even gets to be the guy who, when he learns of his former partner/son-turned-rat's suffering, lets him go, freeing his enslaved Ariel to the winds, where perhaps he can find true freedom and peace with his resplendently-lit woodcarved boxes.
It all felt so good, to see him do that, it was nearly perfect, 92% pure, it was fantastic. A fantasy. And, therefore, not what I was expecting from the series that had just pummeled us into the To'hajilee burial ground with the consequences of Walt's Heisenbergian ways.
I read desperately all the tweets and reviews that said the finale was perfect. I convinced myself to justify that Walt really didn't get everything right, that he still caused all this mayhem and is still dying alone, having destroyed his family and the empire he fought so hard to create. That the long-anticipated final finale surprise was, as Vince Gilligan said, the fact that there were no surprises.
That it basically went as mass-hoped, as planned. That we all were slavering to see some redemption, and Walt started to get a little but it was too late. That he broke bad, only to break good again with not enough time to make it all work. We wanted to see this show go out in a blaze of glory, and we got it, Walt's glory. Walt wins, but it's a thin victory. Surprise! We didn't surprise you this time, and that's the best surprise!
Hm. Maybe.
Then someone tweeted about Norm Macdonald's finale theory just as I was trying to go to sleep the night before last, and I spent the next three hours awake by the glow of my smartphone, reading every letter of Norm's tweets. And my too-complicated-by-half brain found what it had been looking for. Another way to read the finale.
This is worth digging through on your own, though the later you read this the more it will be obscured by football tweets, but basically, Norm puts a slightly different spin on the New Yorker's Emily Nussbaum's disappointed review of the finale, which says that the finale DID feel like Walt's dying fantasy of what he WOULD do, if he could get back to Albuquerque. Maybe this Felina finale is his dying wish, that he really dies alone in that car, mid-plotting and planning, and really we'll never know what happens to Jesse, Skylar, Marie, the neo-Nazis, Todd, Lydia, or any of the horrific machinations he set in motion the day he started cooking blue meth.
Norm goes further than Emily, though, because what he suggests isn't that "it's all a dream" and that Gilligan even overtly expresses this in the finale. First off, Norm doesn't care what Vince has to say about it at all, actually. The work speaks for itself. Even though all the writers basically say they meant the finale to be taken literally, Norm isn't having it. Not the way it's written, executed, cinematographed, etc.
No, when Walt exhales as the harrowing world-ending sound of police car tires against snow pull away and the red and blue lights of capture fade, it's his dying breath. From the keys dropping from the sky onward, things work out for the broken bad Mr. White, because they are symbolic. He works out how he would end his life, had he the time, had he the ability. What we see is a largely egocentric fantasy of this truly broken man setting it as right as he can.
The evidence that Norm brings to this is heartening, too. This is a supposedly nation-wide manhunt, that necessitated Walt being shipped in an oil truck all the way to New Hampshire, yet he glides back into town in a stolen car after calling the cops to him. He creeps into the Schwartz' new house unimpeded, and does so everywhere else. Skylar's new place, where the cops are watching. His old house, staring at his reflection in broken mirrors. He watches his son through double windows, a la Christmas Carol. Carol's name, of course, is made a big deal for no otherwise apparent reason. He is gaunt, his movements are slow, shuffling, unfrantic as we've known him, finally sure, finally, it seems, at some kind of peace.
The cinematography certainly lends itself to almost a dreamlike state. Jesse's fantasy of wordworking, the "clue" for the finale that everyone harped about in press events, is lit in single-source, golden, holy organ music-playing light, all sensual, tactile, a Creator with his creation, all going right. The same single-source, half-face-shadowing light, happens in Skylar's apartment. At the end, in the Nazi's clubhouse. The camera moves slower, lurking, Walt is revealed in places by magic. It is shot, Norm posits, intentionally, for us to feel it is unreal.
A note, too, about the shadows. Jesse is tortured until he really seems to have half a face, and is lit, and shot, in that half-face darkness. As is Walt many times. Repetitions of images of Gus, with half his face blasted off. And the pink teddy bear from the plane crash. Manifestations of Walt's destructive power. Two-faced. Janus. We see what the lies of Heisenberg has wrought. And Walt dies by his own hand but saves his surrogate son, and has the time to go be with his equipment, his Precious, a distorted shot of his face and blood on the only thing he ever truly loved. He did it, it wasn't all for nothing.
Or, if you believe Norm's theory, he didn't do it. He didn't actually do any of those things. He died in the car, frozen, alone, still plotting, fantasizing about the final gambit he never actually gets to make. The cancer gets him and it is, indeed, all for nothing.
If you can't tell, I rewatched the last two episodes of Breaking Bad yesterday, to see this theory in action for myself. And I have come to the conclusion that it does work, but probably not for the reasons you think.
There are definitely holes. If Walt is imagining this final conversation with Skylar, then how does he know about Todd's visit to their house, threatening her not to reveal anything she knows about Lydia? There definitely is not a jump cut in Walt's scene in the car, where we think he might be dead but then he flips the visor and the keys fall out! It's one continuous cut. Walt doesn't clearly seem to die and then revive.
And in terms of everything going right, magic things have happened for Walt all the time. He is incredibly lucky, and resourceful, and admittedly brilliant, even if his arrogance and pride cause him to miscalculate, or, in the case of Jesse, completely underestimate his allegiance.
Breaking Bad has had otherworldly-seeming things happen more than I remembered. The Cousins are shot and move like Death itself, coming for Walt's life in ways that are beyond human. I mean, Walt meets Jane's dad at the bar before he goes back to Jesse's place and watches her die, and this causes a cataclysmic plane crash? WHAT are the chances of THAT?! Hank discovers Walt's true identity because he leaves a copy of Leaves of Grass on his toilet seat?? HOW would that have actually happened?!
So Walt evading all the police forces of Albuquerque isn't too terribly hard to believe. Him sneaking ricin into a Stevia packet doesn't seem to be too farfetched, when he knows she always sits in the same cafe at 10am on Tuesdays, and she always wants Stevia. He put a fake ricin pill into a cigarette and planted it, somehow, in Jesse's Roomba, so that Jesse would stop worrying about accidentally poisoning someone.
Walt takes advantage of a universe that offers him up chances all the time. This universe offered him up some big breaks at the end, and he took advantage of them like he always did. He just now has his priorities in order. Which, given months in solitude in the woods, dying of cancer, paying a stranger $10,000 just to stay for a game of poker, isn't a stretch to see him come to the conclusion that with his dying strength, he needs to nut up and provide for his family at all costs. Gretchen and Elliot appear on Charlie Rose, and suddenly he has his plan. He sees his way out.
But should he be allowed to carry through his plans? The show, or, really, MY experience watching this show, has always been so UNCERTAIN about Walt. He's bad, but we still identify with him. He does worse after worse thing, and especially after Ozymandias, we SEE just how much of a monster he truly is. But he's not all monster. So should he get a chance at redemption?
Well, I think yes and no. And I think this finale actually gives us the chance to see both, even though they are diametrically opposed. At the same time.
I think Felina/finale is actually a quantum finale.
Heisenberg, remember, is the name of the scientist attributed mostly for coming up with the uncertainty principle, which, in quantum physics, is all about the fact that we can't know everything about a particle all at once, and whenever we "check" to see, for example, a particle's location, we can't determine the direction of its spin exactly. You follow this to the Schroedinger's cat conclusion, and if you put the cat in the box with poison, until you check, the cat is both dead and alive at the same time. Truly. Actually. You can't know for sure until you check.
Breaking Bad has always been hyper aware of its audiences' expectations. Its job is solely to tell a good story, and it has definitely done so with the Felina finale. But what it's also done artistically, which the literal finale sort of walks back, is create a truly Shakespearean, Euripidean character of negative empathy.
Paula Vogel talks about this in this video, which I can't figure out how to embed but will try to more later.
Her gist, though, is that great dramas used to be made where we are meant to struggle, as an audience, to decide what is right and wrong with these characters' actions. They are compelling, human, faulty, destructive monsters and we identify with them, we see the human inside them, we see the monster inside us. We don't like these characters, but we also really do. What should happen to them? Should Hamlet kill Claudius? Should Richard III gain control over everything? Should Lear get Cordelia's love back?
In most cases, the characters both win and lose, and tend to get more glory than actual peace or happiness.
I think, now that I've seen the finale, I definitely wanted Walt to fail. I wanted to see him denied the glory he sought. I wanted him punished for his sins, somehow, even if he gets everything he wants, because I don't want to live in a world where there aren't consequences to doing wrong, to doing evil. Breaking Bad, for me, is about how possible it is to delude yourself into thinking you're doing good, even as you set in motion actions that cancer everything around you, that destroy all you claim to be fighting for.
Is the world that just, that fair? Does karma exist? Can a man, even as loathsome as Walt, be judged so harshly, if he attempts to make good at the end?
I don't know. And I don't think Breaking Bad does either. But as artists, I think Norm's theory IS there, really, like any great work of literature does, to offer the alternative to the sexy, ratings-and-audience pleasing version. The literal interpretation.
I think both exist simultaneously. I think Walt's both dead and alive in that car, and until we check, until each one of us goes through that thought process for ourselves and determines what we truly believe or value about the universe, about America, about the actions of this flawed anti-hero, he has to both accomplish what he does, and also fail to accomplish it.
THAT ending, that sophisticated, do you really trust your senses, what do you think of this story, you be the scientist, you decide, or, if you'd prefer to be an artist like me and keep both options in mind at the same time, and/both instead of either/or, you get to decide what world you live in.
Breaking Bad is, therefore, to me a quantum reflection of what you think bad is. And what the world does with the bad and the good. You check, you decide.
So.
There exists on the internet these days a certain subgenre of thinkpieces that have generated themselves all summer at an exponentially rabid/rapid pace. This is, of course, the Breaking Bad Thinkpiece.
And of course, now that the series is over, and we've had a few days to digest the experience and implications of the finale, these kind of thinkpieces are replicating themselves with wild abandon.
I am throwing my hat into this well-traveled ring because I am, like all other writers of these thinkpieces, an unabashedly devoted fan, I can't help but have strong opinions about it, and I was honestly fairly disappointed with the story of the finale. Not the production of it, nor the experience of it entirely, even, but the story, and its implications for the series as a whole.
I went onto Gchat and spent a few hours in post-show analysis over several days with my best friends. I gorged myself on every review of the finale, every point of view I could find about what had happened. I just couldn't decide what I felt. What I was settling for. What I wish had happened.
It was sincerely difficult to articulate, because I felt like I was missing something that maybe I wasn't even really supposed to catch on to. My brain, which always tries to make things the most complicated they can be, couldn't figure out how to reinterpret this fairly-straight-forward and ultimately-semi-victorious hail Mary pass by Walter White, which, miraculously, it seems, all works out in his favour. Is it really ending this simply?
Walt dies on his own terms. He finally tells Skylar the truth, that he did this all for himself, because he loved it, because he was good at it, because it made him feel alive. He ends Heisenberg's career in an epic badass rain of jerry-rigged machine gun murder, he finally refuses the seduction of MORE money after he has safely used his fearsome alter ego to threaten his former colleagues/privileged khaki clowns into ensuring the money he DID save from calamity will end up in his family's care after all, and he even gets to be the guy who, when he learns of his former partner/son-turned-rat's suffering, lets him go, freeing his enslaved Ariel to the winds, where perhaps he can find true freedom and peace with his resplendently-lit woodcarved boxes.
It all felt so good, to see him do that, it was nearly perfect, 92% pure, it was fantastic. A fantasy. And, therefore, not what I was expecting from the series that had just pummeled us into the To'hajilee burial ground with the consequences of Walt's Heisenbergian ways.
I read desperately all the tweets and reviews that said the finale was perfect. I convinced myself to justify that Walt really didn't get everything right, that he still caused all this mayhem and is still dying alone, having destroyed his family and the empire he fought so hard to create. That the long-anticipated final finale surprise was, as Vince Gilligan said, the fact that there were no surprises.
That it basically went as mass-hoped, as planned. That we all were slavering to see some redemption, and Walt started to get a little but it was too late. That he broke bad, only to break good again with not enough time to make it all work. We wanted to see this show go out in a blaze of glory, and we got it, Walt's glory. Walt wins, but it's a thin victory. Surprise! We didn't surprise you this time, and that's the best surprise!
Hm. Maybe.
Then someone tweeted about Norm Macdonald's finale theory just as I was trying to go to sleep the night before last, and I spent the next three hours awake by the glow of my smartphone, reading every letter of Norm's tweets. And my too-complicated-by-half brain found what it had been looking for. Another way to read the finale.
This is worth digging through on your own, though the later you read this the more it will be obscured by football tweets, but basically, Norm puts a slightly different spin on the New Yorker's Emily Nussbaum's disappointed review of the finale, which says that the finale DID feel like Walt's dying fantasy of what he WOULD do, if he could get back to Albuquerque. Maybe this Felina finale is his dying wish, that he really dies alone in that car, mid-plotting and planning, and really we'll never know what happens to Jesse, Skylar, Marie, the neo-Nazis, Todd, Lydia, or any of the horrific machinations he set in motion the day he started cooking blue meth.
Norm goes further than Emily, though, because what he suggests isn't that "it's all a dream" and that Gilligan even overtly expresses this in the finale. First off, Norm doesn't care what Vince has to say about it at all, actually. The work speaks for itself. Even though all the writers basically say they meant the finale to be taken literally, Norm isn't having it. Not the way it's written, executed, cinematographed, etc.
No, when Walt exhales as the harrowing world-ending sound of police car tires against snow pull away and the red and blue lights of capture fade, it's his dying breath. From the keys dropping from the sky onward, things work out for the broken bad Mr. White, because they are symbolic. He works out how he would end his life, had he the time, had he the ability. What we see is a largely egocentric fantasy of this truly broken man setting it as right as he can.
The evidence that Norm brings to this is heartening, too. This is a supposedly nation-wide manhunt, that necessitated Walt being shipped in an oil truck all the way to New Hampshire, yet he glides back into town in a stolen car after calling the cops to him. He creeps into the Schwartz' new house unimpeded, and does so everywhere else. Skylar's new place, where the cops are watching. His old house, staring at his reflection in broken mirrors. He watches his son through double windows, a la Christmas Carol. Carol's name, of course, is made a big deal for no otherwise apparent reason. He is gaunt, his movements are slow, shuffling, unfrantic as we've known him, finally sure, finally, it seems, at some kind of peace.
The cinematography certainly lends itself to almost a dreamlike state. Jesse's fantasy of wordworking, the "clue" for the finale that everyone harped about in press events, is lit in single-source, golden, holy organ music-playing light, all sensual, tactile, a Creator with his creation, all going right. The same single-source, half-face-shadowing light, happens in Skylar's apartment. At the end, in the Nazi's clubhouse. The camera moves slower, lurking, Walt is revealed in places by magic. It is shot, Norm posits, intentionally, for us to feel it is unreal.
A note, too, about the shadows. Jesse is tortured until he really seems to have half a face, and is lit, and shot, in that half-face darkness. As is Walt many times. Repetitions of images of Gus, with half his face blasted off. And the pink teddy bear from the plane crash. Manifestations of Walt's destructive power. Two-faced. Janus. We see what the lies of Heisenberg has wrought. And Walt dies by his own hand but saves his surrogate son, and has the time to go be with his equipment, his Precious, a distorted shot of his face and blood on the only thing he ever truly loved. He did it, it wasn't all for nothing.
Or, if you believe Norm's theory, he didn't do it. He didn't actually do any of those things. He died in the car, frozen, alone, still plotting, fantasizing about the final gambit he never actually gets to make. The cancer gets him and it is, indeed, all for nothing.
If you can't tell, I rewatched the last two episodes of Breaking Bad yesterday, to see this theory in action for myself. And I have come to the conclusion that it does work, but probably not for the reasons you think.
There are definitely holes. If Walt is imagining this final conversation with Skylar, then how does he know about Todd's visit to their house, threatening her not to reveal anything she knows about Lydia? There definitely is not a jump cut in Walt's scene in the car, where we think he might be dead but then he flips the visor and the keys fall out! It's one continuous cut. Walt doesn't clearly seem to die and then revive.
And in terms of everything going right, magic things have happened for Walt all the time. He is incredibly lucky, and resourceful, and admittedly brilliant, even if his arrogance and pride cause him to miscalculate, or, in the case of Jesse, completely underestimate his allegiance.
Breaking Bad has had otherworldly-seeming things happen more than I remembered. The Cousins are shot and move like Death itself, coming for Walt's life in ways that are beyond human. I mean, Walt meets Jane's dad at the bar before he goes back to Jesse's place and watches her die, and this causes a cataclysmic plane crash? WHAT are the chances of THAT?! Hank discovers Walt's true identity because he leaves a copy of Leaves of Grass on his toilet seat?? HOW would that have actually happened?!
So Walt evading all the police forces of Albuquerque isn't too terribly hard to believe. Him sneaking ricin into a Stevia packet doesn't seem to be too farfetched, when he knows she always sits in the same cafe at 10am on Tuesdays, and she always wants Stevia. He put a fake ricin pill into a cigarette and planted it, somehow, in Jesse's Roomba, so that Jesse would stop worrying about accidentally poisoning someone.
Walt takes advantage of a universe that offers him up chances all the time. This universe offered him up some big breaks at the end, and he took advantage of them like he always did. He just now has his priorities in order. Which, given months in solitude in the woods, dying of cancer, paying a stranger $10,000 just to stay for a game of poker, isn't a stretch to see him come to the conclusion that with his dying strength, he needs to nut up and provide for his family at all costs. Gretchen and Elliot appear on Charlie Rose, and suddenly he has his plan. He sees his way out.
But should he be allowed to carry through his plans? The show, or, really, MY experience watching this show, has always been so UNCERTAIN about Walt. He's bad, but we still identify with him. He does worse after worse thing, and especially after Ozymandias, we SEE just how much of a monster he truly is. But he's not all monster. So should he get a chance at redemption?
Well, I think yes and no. And I think this finale actually gives us the chance to see both, even though they are diametrically opposed. At the same time.
I think Felina/finale is actually a quantum finale.
Heisenberg, remember, is the name of the scientist attributed mostly for coming up with the uncertainty principle, which, in quantum physics, is all about the fact that we can't know everything about a particle all at once, and whenever we "check" to see, for example, a particle's location, we can't determine the direction of its spin exactly. You follow this to the Schroedinger's cat conclusion, and if you put the cat in the box with poison, until you check, the cat is both dead and alive at the same time. Truly. Actually. You can't know for sure until you check.
Breaking Bad has always been hyper aware of its audiences' expectations. Its job is solely to tell a good story, and it has definitely done so with the Felina finale. But what it's also done artistically, which the literal finale sort of walks back, is create a truly Shakespearean, Euripidean character of negative empathy.
Paula Vogel talks about this in this video, which I can't figure out how to embed but will try to more later.
Her gist, though, is that great dramas used to be made where we are meant to struggle, as an audience, to decide what is right and wrong with these characters' actions. They are compelling, human, faulty, destructive monsters and we identify with them, we see the human inside them, we see the monster inside us. We don't like these characters, but we also really do. What should happen to them? Should Hamlet kill Claudius? Should Richard III gain control over everything? Should Lear get Cordelia's love back?
In most cases, the characters both win and lose, and tend to get more glory than actual peace or happiness.
I think, now that I've seen the finale, I definitely wanted Walt to fail. I wanted to see him denied the glory he sought. I wanted him punished for his sins, somehow, even if he gets everything he wants, because I don't want to live in a world where there aren't consequences to doing wrong, to doing evil. Breaking Bad, for me, is about how possible it is to delude yourself into thinking you're doing good, even as you set in motion actions that cancer everything around you, that destroy all you claim to be fighting for.
Is the world that just, that fair? Does karma exist? Can a man, even as loathsome as Walt, be judged so harshly, if he attempts to make good at the end?
I don't know. And I don't think Breaking Bad does either. But as artists, I think Norm's theory IS there, really, like any great work of literature does, to offer the alternative to the sexy, ratings-and-audience pleasing version. The literal interpretation.
I think both exist simultaneously. I think Walt's both dead and alive in that car, and until we check, until each one of us goes through that thought process for ourselves and determines what we truly believe or value about the universe, about America, about the actions of this flawed anti-hero, he has to both accomplish what he does, and also fail to accomplish it.
THAT ending, that sophisticated, do you really trust your senses, what do you think of this story, you be the scientist, you decide, or, if you'd prefer to be an artist like me and keep both options in mind at the same time, and/both instead of either/or, you get to decide what world you live in.
Breaking Bad is, therefore, to me a quantum reflection of what you think bad is. And what the world does with the bad and the good. You check, you decide.
Friday, October 4, 2013
An Open Letter to Open Letters
An Open Letter to Open Letters,
I would like to write an open letter to open letters, but I have found I do not have anything to say, except that I appreciate the opportunity it provides to showcase openly how open and transparent I am about my process, as a human being and an artist, which of course can hide all the shadowy other reasons I am seeking attention by posting an open letter in the first place.
Writing an open letter is, in fact, much like shutting down the government, one does it for its own sake. One declares openly that one is a writer of open letters by writing an open letter, and ipso facto, mission accomplished. You don't even need to read this letter to know that I am a writer of open letters, and must be incredibly confident, smart, sexy, and artistic, to write my letters so openly.
This is something we all desire, sure. I write so you will read. I need you to understand me. I need you to love me. I need validation from the eyes and pageviews and downloads and listens and retweets and reblogs and Likes and hashtags and blog posts that show me to the world for who I want to be seen as.
I used to wonder what it would be like to be conscious of when I am in another person's dream. Like, if I killed someone in another person's dream, then in my real life I'd carry around that knowledge, that guilt. I am a murderer in your eyes. How awful, to not be able to tell that person, en medias dream, "No, you don't understand! That's not me! That's not who I am!"
If there is anything I can say to end this open letter to you, Open Letters, it's that this day and age, we are all our own Public Relations Managers, and we keep nothing "private." Except, of course, for all the things I am not saying in this letter. I mention others' dreams and my appearance in them. I will not mention my own.
I would like to write an open letter to open letters, but I have found I do not have anything to say, except that I appreciate the opportunity it provides to showcase openly how open and transparent I am about my process, as a human being and an artist, which of course can hide all the shadowy other reasons I am seeking attention by posting an open letter in the first place.
Writing an open letter is, in fact, much like shutting down the government, one does it for its own sake. One declares openly that one is a writer of open letters by writing an open letter, and ipso facto, mission accomplished. You don't even need to read this letter to know that I am a writer of open letters, and must be incredibly confident, smart, sexy, and artistic, to write my letters so openly.
This is something we all desire, sure. I write so you will read. I need you to understand me. I need you to love me. I need validation from the eyes and pageviews and downloads and listens and retweets and reblogs and Likes and hashtags and blog posts that show me to the world for who I want to be seen as.
I used to wonder what it would be like to be conscious of when I am in another person's dream. Like, if I killed someone in another person's dream, then in my real life I'd carry around that knowledge, that guilt. I am a murderer in your eyes. How awful, to not be able to tell that person, en medias dream, "No, you don't understand! That's not me! That's not who I am!"
If there is anything I can say to end this open letter to you, Open Letters, it's that this day and age, we are all our own Public Relations Managers, and we keep nothing "private." Except, of course, for all the things I am not saying in this letter. I mention others' dreams and my appearance in them. I will not mention my own.
Thursday, October 3, 2013
Five Paragraphs At A Time
This isn't going to be anything. I mean, it's going to be pretty much whatever comes to my head first, because what I've noticed with myself is that I tend to stop most, if not all, of what I think from coming out into the world for fear of it being rejected.
This is what happens when you perpetually doubt yourself. You play crystal ball strategist, you think you know the cards that are coming before the flip. You rely on your intuition, solely, to decide whether you should take any particular risk, stick your neck out at any particular angle.
Malcolm Gladwell says in order to overcome writer's block you need to break the expectation of writing perfect prose, and simply write a few paragraphs a day. He said four, but I like to be ambitious and like odd numbers better. I will likely arbitrarily edit these sentences so they appear as five paragraphs. If I haven't done this when you're reading, I apologize for wasting your eyesight.
Fear, I think we've all heard and hardly internalized, is the only thing to be feared itself, but I have to admit it's Shame that really gets me crumbling. Shame is a kind of fear, I suppose, but it's not private, like anxiety can be. It's not secret. It's wrapped up entirely in others, in your perception of their perceptions.
Right now I'm a little ashamed to admit (though hardly too ashamed to post on a blog), but I'm pretty lost. I don't know what to do next, for my career, for my art, for my life. I have no specific reason to be ashamed, of course, I am with someone I truly love, I live in a great place, I work hard at a hard job that pays me well for my hard work. But I want to make something. I want to be an artist. And I am blocked, right now, and five paragraphs at a time, in spite of all fears, I'll attempt to change that.
This is what happens when you perpetually doubt yourself. You play crystal ball strategist, you think you know the cards that are coming before the flip. You rely on your intuition, solely, to decide whether you should take any particular risk, stick your neck out at any particular angle.
Malcolm Gladwell says in order to overcome writer's block you need to break the expectation of writing perfect prose, and simply write a few paragraphs a day. He said four, but I like to be ambitious and like odd numbers better. I will likely arbitrarily edit these sentences so they appear as five paragraphs. If I haven't done this when you're reading, I apologize for wasting your eyesight.
Fear, I think we've all heard and hardly internalized, is the only thing to be feared itself, but I have to admit it's Shame that really gets me crumbling. Shame is a kind of fear, I suppose, but it's not private, like anxiety can be. It's not secret. It's wrapped up entirely in others, in your perception of their perceptions.
Right now I'm a little ashamed to admit (though hardly too ashamed to post on a blog), but I'm pretty lost. I don't know what to do next, for my career, for my art, for my life. I have no specific reason to be ashamed, of course, I am with someone I truly love, I live in a great place, I work hard at a hard job that pays me well for my hard work. But I want to make something. I want to be an artist. And I am blocked, right now, and five paragraphs at a time, in spite of all fears, I'll attempt to change that.
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