Dave Cullen: Best Posts

My Nigga Moment

Mon, 09 Jan 2006 04:20:17 GMT

I've been loving this Boondocks TV series.

Makes me kinda squeamish sometimes, though. If this were written by a white guy, it would have been cancelled after one episode, and any TV executive involved in greenlighting it fired in disgrace.

But it's freaking funny.

And . . . how do you say this without sounding REALLY white . . . ? I'm understanding better.

Thought I understood the race stuff pretty well. Not well enough, apparently.

So I'm loving the show, for a whole lotta reasons. But the Nigga Moment episode--officially titled "Grandad's Fight"--that one was just too much. Grandad gets beaten up by a mean old blind man, and humilated for it. Everyone involved is black, including the narrator, who tells us and grandad about twenty times that it's just a nigga moment--where two niggas find themselves in a situation where they find themselves driven to act stupid, and it always ends badly.

Halfway through I literally felt like I was going to throw up. And all i could think was: I don't care how black the writer is, it's still freaking racist.

And I sure felt racist chuckling at it. And it was hard not to, it was funny. But good lord. Man, did I feel dirty.

I turned it off, but didn't delete it from the tivo.

Came back about a month later and decided to finish. More nigga nigga nigga, dumb niggas, stupid niggas, Goooooooood!

But finally, the episode climaxes with gramps and the blind guy in a rematch that ends horribly, followed by a mini riot among the crowd gathered to watch. Riley--the angry (eight year old?) grandson who set up the whole disgusting fight and took bets and charged admission and then instigated the riot to get the hell out of there when it went sour--stands back, looks at the mostly white crowd acting like idiots, and says, ruefully, "niggas!"

Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. Wow. Nicely done. Almost sounds heavy handed describing it now, but it sure lured me in. And enlightened me, too. And not just about white people, but about us, too. And the whole idea of niggas. Or one crucial nigga idea, at least.

This is the first show in ages that makes me feel like a nerdy white guy, and/or a white-guilt kinda guy. Discomforting, because I thought I was way past all that, but I guess that means I wasn't.

And it's funny as hell.

(FYI, It's on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim. Sunday at 11, I read at one point, but I have no idea. That's what your tivo is for.)

Indie Spirit Award Noms just announced

Tue, 29 Nov 2005 18:30:39 GMT

Taking this quick writing break to spread the good word, announced just in the last hour. Nom list. Press release.

I was happy to see two of my favorite small films of the year, Mysterious Skin and (to a lesser extent) Me and You and Everyone We Know nominated. (Skin for best director for Gregg Araki--quite the coup; and Me & You . . . for best first feature and best first screenplay.)

Most of the big awards were dominated by films also in the running for Oscars: Capote, Brokeback Mountain, and Good Night and Good Luck tied for second (with a couple others) at four noms.

Brokeback Mountain was tied for second : Best pic, actor, director &sptg actress. (Sorry Jake, nothing for you.)

My one shock was that the Brokeback Screenplay was neglected. I thought Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana did the nearly impossible -- took an amazing, award-winning story and improved on it. How often is the movie richer and more complex than the book? (Granted that the "book" was only 30 pages. But in most hands, it would have been fleshed out with pale filler. This version made me wish Annie would have written it much longer.)

This will of course, help Brokeback--perhaps more than any of the other well-known pics, as it has a special credibility problem with straight audiences. This may help ever so slightly to legitimize it as "a great film," instead of just "the big film for the gays." Every bit of cred helps.

And it may help a bit more in the Oscar race, as the only film with more noms, "The Squid & The Whale," is out of serious contention.

Watching Brokeback Mountain -- just about perfect

Sun, 20 Nov 2005 20:20:14 GMT

Watched Brokeback Mountain last night. Wow. Just about perfect.

Every bit as moving as the short story, and then some. They really fleshed out the characters, and I empathized with them more strongly. Enough that I'm not angry at Ennis anymore. I totally understand why he did it. How he thought he had to.

The problem with preconceptions is that it was hard not to sit there in the first half hour thinking, "Heath Ledger is doing fine, but 'a revelation'? Not quite getting that." (And there was plenty of quiet time to think.) But by the end I had forgotten all about that, and I was just in awe.

And Jake. Jake was just a joy to behold, every moment he was on screen. He really was. And that was his job--that was his character. And what a wonderful character to light up this movie. Would have been so much darker and flatter without him.

The women were great, too, and I'm so glad their characters were fleshed out. The book focuses on two lives ruined, but you get a powerful sense here of it tearing up all four. And to a lesser extent, hurting the daughters as well. Michelle Williams, in particular, is heartbreaking.

Oh, God, speaking of heartbreaking. My favorite scene in the book, hands down, was the reunion on the landing after four years--where they were so overcome with seeing each other, they grabbed each other and kissed passionately in broad daylight.

It was just as powerful on film, but topped by several others. I guess that says something extraordinary right there. The far-and-away best scene of one of the most beloved stories I have ever read, was bested about three times in the film. Would hardly have thought that possible.

The second night they get together out on Brokeback was . . . well, like nothing I've ever seen before, but only in the sense that I've never seen it with men. Picture one of the all-time great romantic moments on film, and then imagine it finally challenged by something just as beautiful, complex and tender with two men. Finally. First time ever ever ever I didn't have to imagine a stand-in for the woman up there.

It was just amazing. They had "gotten together" in a late-night drunken situation that Ennis was completely unable to deal with in the morning. Or the next evening. He tells Jake he's not queer, that it was a one-time thing and that's that. But he can't stick to it. When he comes into the tent, he's completely at war inside. Trying desperately not to do it, but his heart begging him to finally accept what it feels. It is so hard for him, his struggle is so palpable, and Jack is so perfect with him. God me balling again just remembering.

And their last climactic scene together and what comes after: that is just so intense, slammed me in the skull so hard so many ways one after the other after the other.

Just devastating.

And I'm not going to say a whole lot here, but I do believe Heath's finest moment comes when Ennis visits Jacks parents and gets some news from his mom. What he doesn't say. What he works so hard to hide. God. That poor, poor man. How can you possibly blame that guy?

---

So a strange thing happened to me after the film, while Ang Lee was interviewed onstage. (Streaming video and a news story on it here -- Thanks Mark. And FYI, Annie left early from the book signing, so I missed here. Didn't talk to her or Ang. Damn. But they sat across the aisle from us, and during the credits I got a chance to at least walk over and thank Larry and Diana for doing such an amazing job. They really fleshed this incredible story out.)

So the interview was great. To listen to him is to know you are in the presence of a true artist, whatever you think of this particular film. (Or The Hulk.) Late in the discussion, the Denver Post critic brought up they gay question a couple times, dealing with the gay issue, the gay this the gay that. It was oddly jarring for me. So weird to hear it called a gay film or a gay love story or gay anything. For the last two hours, I had just been lost in an exquisite love story.

I know, I know, I have scoffed right here about people saying it's not a gay film: What! It's two men in love having sex. That's called gay. The entire story revolves around the forbiddenness of their love--because it's gay--the whole tragedy is centered on the problem of the men being gay.

Yeah, I have said all that. And it's all true. In that sense, it is a gay film, in two distinct and crucial ways. But I'm now seeing the other point of view, too. It's also an aching love story between two people who just happen to be gay.

The other great romantic movie of the decade--Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind--was also a gripping love story of two people fighting desperately both for and against their problematic love for each other. But it wasn't a film about a memory-erasing device was it? That was just the vehicle, the problem to present for these two people to fight madly for the love being ripped away from them.

Exactly the same thing here.

All I know is, that in spite of knowing full well for the two-plus hours that it was the revulsion of homosexuality that was driving these two tragic lovers apart, I truly forgot about it being a gay thing. The love story was just too intense. It didn't matter what was driving these two guys apart, it was just about the intensity of the love between these two guys.

So I was literally startled to hear her using the gay word while I was still basking in that afterglow. Maybe because the concept of "gay love" is offensive to some part of me that is sick of hearing it distinguished from "love." It's exactly the same. For two hours I had not been watching gay love, I had just been watching love.

It didn't feel like a gay film. It just felt like home.

---

Update:

You guys kept adding so many comments (thousands), that long after this post, we started a whole Brokeback Mountain Discussion Forum.

And for links to everything imaginable, see our Ultimate Brokeback Mountain Guide.

How (much) will Brokeback Mountain change America?

Mon, 14 Nov 2005 07:23:02 GMT

Friday, The Hollywood Reporter published this wonderful piece, Ang Lee's 'Brokeback' explores 'last frontier'. It opens like this:

There's no doubt that a $13 million quality movie like Ang Lee's "Brokeback Mountain," which has wowed festivalgoers and reviewers in Telluride, Venice and Toronto, will play well in big movie markets around the country. The question is, how broad will it go?

No one knows that answer, because no one has ventured into this territory before. The movie is a groundbreaker. There's never been a homosexual cowboy movie, and while the indies have been supplying gay romances to the art house circuit for years, and gay series like "Queer as Folk" and "Will & Grace" have been pulling big numbers on TV, there hasn't been a mainstream gay love story since 1982's "Making Love," which bombed and was blamed by many for damaging Harry Hamlin's career. "It's the one last frontier," says Lee.

Reaches its most hopeful here:

Brokeback Mountain could be the mainstream gay romance that many people have been waiting for. One Toronto wag called it "the gay 'Gone with the Wind'." "Of all the gay-themed films I've watched," says Damon Romine of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, "this is the first one I've seen about two men in love, told in a way that straight people can relate to. People don't have to be gay to understand loss and longing and unrequited love. Hollywood churns out endless variations on the theme of forbidden love. This is a new take on that genre, a film that has tremendous potential to reach and transform mainstream audiences."

And gets serious about the marketing plan here:

Focus will release "Brokeback" in limited situations through the holidays -- as the big studio guns play themselves out -- and widen it in January. Since the trailer went out, Focus has placed a registration page for advance sales on the "Brokeback" Web site. The initial marketing push is to women and younger moviegoers. "You're looking for people who are empathetic," says Schamus, "and able to reach their emotions. And younger folks are way out ahead on this stuff. Overall, they are not worked up about gay issues." Becoming an Oscar contender should push "Brokeback" into must-see territory, as it did "Philadelphia."

And this morning, Newsweek unleashed a similar story: "Forbidden Territory". (It was incorrectly ID'd all over the web as their review. Author Sean Smith is their entertainment reporter, not their film critic. He writes pieces about the business of Hollywood, trends, analysis, so forth. The review will come soon, probably from David Ansen.)

More heartening words there:

The film, written by Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana, is a near-perfect adaptation of Proulx's work. It has already earned the top prize at the Venice Film Festival and is almost certain to be an Oscar contender. More than that, though, "Brokeback" feels like a landmark film. No American film before has portrayed love between two men as something this pure and sacred. As such, it has the potential to change the national conversation and to challenge people's ideas about the value and validity of same-sex relationships. In the meantime, it's already upended decades of Hollywood conventional wisdom.

And this fascinating take on the marketing, expanding a bit on the HR's take. There's more to it than this, but you'll get the gist:

That discomfort would seem to make the movie difficult to market. When the trailer plays in theaters where there are a lot of young men in the audience, it's often met with snickers or outright laughter. How do you get those guys to see the movie? You don't. "If you have a problem with the subject matter, that's your problem, not mine," Schamus says. "It would be great if you got over your problem, but I'm not sitting here trying to figure out how to help you with it." In an early meeting, Schamus told Lee that, from a marketing standpoint, they were making this film for one core audience. "Yes, of course," Lee said. "The gay audience." No, Schamus said. "Women."

When it came time to design the poster for the film, Schamus didn't research posters of famous Westerns for ideas. He looked at the posters of the 50 most romantic movies ever made. "If you look at our poster," he says, "you can see traces of our inspiration, 'Titanic'."

I'm skeptical that it can attract huge numbers of straight women, much less inspire them to drag their boyfriends. But it doesn't need huge numbers. Modest numbers for an arthouse film would be a nice start. Actual crossover success would be wonderful. I'm sure hoping.

And you can do your part by spreading the word. And organizing a group for opening weekend in your town. Advance group ticket sales here.

Anyway, the big, gay AMERICAblog posted a somewhat curious take on the Newsweek story today, which provoked a spirited and often interesting debate in its lively comments section.

Wildly divergent views there--and elsewhere--about how it will play to mainstream America.

Personally, I think it wll have modest success, beating most expectations, but well shy of a blockbuster. (Who knows, $30-60 million gross. I realize that's a big range. Hoping toward the high end, but would be satisfied with the low.)

Here's the thing: like most big cultural-moment movies, the number of people who actually see it at theatres will be a small fraction of the national population. But EVERYone will hear about it, read about it, end up talking about it or at least sitting silently and having to listen about it.

It will change the national conversation. How much it changes, that's the question. It won't make gay-love acceptable in southern Baptist churches next month. But it will leave the conversation changed.

And all the answers will start trickling in soon.

And I will see it in six days.

Till then, got to buckle under on my book. See you next Sunday.

Update:

You guys kept adding so many comments (thousands), that long after this post, we started a whole Brokeback Mountain Discussion Forum.

And for links to everything imaginable, see our Ultimate Brokeback Mountain Guide.

Salon included me in their classics

Sun, 13 Nov 2005 05:38:35 GMT

This is kind of cool. Salon is celebrating its tenth and anniversary and every day the past week they have been highlighting their top stories from a single year.

I did most of my work for them in 1999 and 2000, and two of my stories made the list each year. The lists for 1999 & 2000.

From 1999, they picked two of my Columbine stories:

”I smell like the presence of Satan”
Is Littleton's evangelical subculture a solution to the youth alienation that played a role in the Columbine killings, or a reflection of it?
By Dave Cullen

Inside the Columbine High investigation
Everything you know about the Littleton killings is wrong. But the truth may be scarier than the myths.
By Dave Cullen

And in 2000 they featured, this two-part series on one of the last bastions of blatant discrimination toward gays in America. (I hate to call it a "gays in the military" story, even though it technically is, because that has phrase has like the mind-numbingly tired politico piece I specifically wanted to avoid):

Don’t ask, don’t tell, don’t fall in love, Part I of II
A rare peek inside the lives of gay military officers, a world filled with staggering sacrifice, loneliness and glass ceilings.
By Dave Cullen

A heartbreaking decision, Part II
Gay officers must choose between personal happiness and the careers they've spent years building.
By Dave Cullen

The launch of my love affair (with Brokeback Mountain)

Mon, 07 Nov 2005 00:23:19 GMT

As anxiously as I've watched the Brokeback film project develop, undevelop and redevelop over the years, I had never actually read the story. I guess because I missed it when it first came out, and then I wanted to see it as a film first.

(Book-first rarely works out well. By design/length books are nearly always far deeper and more complex, and the film never lives up. But I can appreciate a great film, and then go read the book for added/different levels of complexity. Almost always better that way. And I really never expected it to take this long.)

But then, on a Sunday almost exactly two months ago, something happened to change all that. Oddly enough, it started with Katrina, and my self-imposed exile for my book project.

So I'm finally, belatedly going to share how the story bowled me over when I read two months ago, why I got obsessive about it, and also my one big problem with the story. (Which I've since mellowed on.)

This is exactly how I experienced it that day (almost; a few small edits). an email to a couple straight friends composed late at night, September 4, 2005:

something odd happened today. a few things, starting with the hurricane, but ending with annie proulx.

and i wanted to get some opinions on it, especially from straight people, so i'm sending this to a few of my favorite literary friends, who whoops, i still have not thanked for all the help and insight getting started with faulkner last month. (who is now seriously threatening nabokov as my most idolized writer, merely on the basis of "As I Lay Dying," which amazed me more with every passing page, and which gave me several crucial insights about my own book, including the fundamental organizing principle. but that's not what i came here to talk about.

i was feeling kind of guilty about the hurricane. i hardly paid attention all week. brought to a head something i'm really struggling with now, this immersion/estrangement thing. i get so involved in politics and events, so worked up that i don't get any work done. so i've had a few stern talks with myself about turning all that off for awhile and being with my own project. letting the world spin around its axis without me for awhile. but then i leave for four days, and bam! the gulf coast is a hell on earth and i've ignored them and feel guilty. (because i could have made it all better if i had just paid attention? hahaha. guess not. and yet ...)

so i heard these vague rumblings late in the week that n.o. had not in fact dodged the missile, and then i heard from my friend ile down there, who told a blood-curdling story that apparent the rest of you had all been following all week, and i've been frantically trying to catch up in the few days since. so i needed something today to pull it all together for me, so i went to the new york times of all places, because frank rich is there, and his column did exactly what i needed it to, and then . . .

of course my eyes couldn't dart past the tiny little film section of the front page without taking a peek, and what were the chances i would not be absorbed by the headline: "Cowboys in Love . . . With Each Other"?

for reasons i couldn't entirely remember, i have kept myself from reading Brokeback Mountain for at least five years, saving it for the variously rumored film projects. (is that pathetic? a writer who deems the book less worthy than the film? but in this case--when we're talking about mass cultural impact, heath ledger and jake gyllenhaal trump annie proulx by a country mile.)

so i knew the times piece was going to give away too much, and i needed to avoid it, but i couldn't make myself. and when ang lee described himself crying at the ending--MINOR SPOILER ALERT; MORE AHEAD--of the two shirts hung side by side--well, five years out the window, i drove right to borders and came home with a copy.

(of course that was just the last straw. long painful spring and summer with my family over the gay stuff. a weird second coming out phase nobody ever told me was coming. they were all so accepting at first--or were they? on the surface yes, and do they want to, yes. but still, the idea of their brother actually making out with a guy . . . gives them the shivers. and they communicate it in so many subtle ways they're not even aware of, and i wasn't either until it all came to a head this past month, with a sad little coda last night at my parents' 50th wedding anniversary dinner. so let's just say i was primed.)

during the drive, i remembered why i originally put off reading it, before even the first rumors of a movie. annie proulx. i had to read Postcards during grad school and it bored the crap out of me. never finished it. don't know whether it was her or me not ready for her, but she left me with a very bad taste, and i was sure she was not up to the task of the kind of first great popular gay love story.

well, she was. really, really amazing. broke my heart, as intended. with a few glaring flaws here and there, but who cares?

i was really curious how it read to straight people, though. how much of it was great storytelling, and how much was it ripping me up over my own life slipping away without getting this damn love thing down?

and then annie surprised me at the end. she was definitely too heavy-handed with the tire-iron idea throughout, but the ending (hmmmm. i guess i'm assuming you've read it. i always assume i'm the last literate person on earth to get to any of the really good stuff), i was shocked at how off it felt. if ang lee had remembered correctly, that would have been an amazing ending, with the shirts hanging there together. but then there's a break, and then two paragraphs in a very different tone, with ennis having nightmares about his lover getting bludgeoned to death with the tire iron.

it took me just about a minute to figure out why that felt so wrong. then i realized it: only a straight person (or a sympathetic lesbian?) would write that ending. she thinks she NEEDS the tire iron to make this a tragic story. or perhaps that she really wanted to boldly address the worst horror of gay life: death at the hands of a tire iron. amazing. she had ALREADY addressed the worst horror of gay life, and she didn't even realize it. at least for homos today. (or in 1997.) i don't know one single gayguy worrying about the tire iron. and nearly every gayguy i know is struggling with his love life. even now that we can couple up, we have no idea how to do it. we're so freaking damaged by the time we make it out, and we have no women in our relationships to do most of the relationship work and . . . and we're just a mess.

but even in the time she set the story--or for thousands of years before--i do believe 99.9% of the homos in the world were successfully avoiding the tire iron. it's what they GAVE UP to avoid it, that's been the tragedy of gay life. her story completely nails it. THAT is the tragedy here.

and most of her instincts were dead on. brilliant to set her story over a 20-year period vaulting right past stonewall. these guys COULD have escaped their prison, and one of them wanted to, but ennis never had the guts to do it. he lives to tell the tale, but he's the most tragic figure here. she doesn't seem to grasp that. she thinks her dead character is the tragic one, but he gave it his best shot and failed; it's her other guy who did himself in.

part of her clearly seems to know that--she wrote the freaking story that screams it. but she didn't seem to fully grasp it. she feels the need to impose this other, physical tragedy, as if the other one wasn't enough.

that's what i found kind of offensive when i got to the end, even before i could grasp what was angering me. that that wasn't enough. i don't think most straight people get that, do they? that you can take all the tire irons out of the picture, you can take the work discrimination out of the picture, we can stop fearing for our lives for our jobs, for any of that stuff, but if we still can't find the love we crave . . . that's a tragedy too.

and that's ACTUAL one most of us are living with, by the way. (or at least a handy excuse for goofballs like me who just can't manage to bag a man. heeheehee.)

but it was still a wonderful story.

how odd that we needed someone other than a gayguy to write it for us. i'm sure hundreds, thousands, endless number of gay love stories have been written by gayguys for gayguys--wasn't leaves of grass a big sloppy gay lovefest? another classic i've never gotten close to--but we needed an outsider to yank it out of the romance genre, and make it palatable. we needed annie proulx and ang lee and heath ledger and jake gyllenhaal. god, i pray the movie is so wonderful straight people are forced to hear about it all through the oscar race and some of them actually go out to see it. or perhaps just the idea or the ad-campaign images of those two will be enough to get some people over the shudders of the idea of two guys kissing.

but i'm really glad i read the story. definitely opened up something inside of me. if only we had any of the quirky, oddball, intellectual gayboy hotties i'm looking for out here in the hinterlands. heheehe. maybe once i finally get my ass out to ny next year i'll find that boy. i hear tell they grow a lot of them out there.

---

Note: I have since eased up about the tire iron. I still think my point is correct, and that she doesn't seem to (get? trust?) how tragic the story already is. But so what. I'd actually forgotten all about it. (Seriously.) The strong stuff stuck with me, the flaws faded away. I still adore that story. Tugs at my heart every time I think about it.

Update:

You guys kept adding so many comments (thousands), that long after this post, we started a whole Brokeback Mountain Discussion Forum.

And for links to everything imaginable, see our Ultimate Brokeback Mountain Guide.

Capote

Sun, 06 Nov 2005 07:05:34 GMT

I swore off blogging for a bit to stay focused, but this I need to talk about.

Just saw Capote. Extraordinary. Especially for a writer. What a gift to get such a glimpse at his process. But . . .

Huge but. But what a cynical take on him. I just don't buy it. He got all those people to open up to him by faking empathy? When he was truly just cold blooded, calculating and entirely manipulative? I guess there are con artists that good out there. I just found it way too hard to swallow.

Now I totally buy that he manipulated people. And that he was routinely conflicted: horrified and saddened, while at the same time at work--he could spot great potential for his own gain at the same moment he experienced great sorrow for them.

But this film showed only half of that equation, hence very little internal conflict. He cared only about himself in this version. Monstrous megalomaniac.

I wrote down CYNICAL! on my note paper about 20 minutes into it. Later I replaced it with cruel. Eventually, comical. Mommy Dearest level ludicrous when he whined that they were torturing him by keeping his alleged friend the killer alive.

Maybe he really was as cold blooded as the killers. But I found that aspect of it exceptionally unconvincing.

And just about everything else about the film pitch perfect. Unfortunately, that was the central conceit.

So I still admire it greatly, with one gigantic reservation.

Mark it a deeply flawed masterpiece.

---

Note: I don't fault Philip Seymour Hoffman's acting, by the way, which was stunning. (And everyone else in the film was exceptional, too.) Unless they left the other half on the editing floor it was clearly written that way and directed that way. Not his decision, it would appear.

my brother owes me . . . a dollar?

Mon, 17 Oct 2005 05:25:25 GMT

i had given up on this a long time ago.

but it feels good, finally. really good.

i just watched the white sox win their first pennant in my lifetime. had just missed the last one: came in 59, two years before my birth.

i used to listen to the games every night in in the bottom bunk with my tiny transistor radio. with the volume turned all the way down to the edge of the off click, with it laid right up against my ear on the pillow, so i could just make out Harry Carrey calling the balls and strikes, but my mom, when she stepped right into our bedroom doorway--which she did every night to see if we were asleep--could not hear a sound from five feet away. and i would close my eyes and feign sleep, praying for a lull in the action till she passed.

(i have never been able to fake anything. took every ounce of concentration i had to paste on that blank sleep expression and try to control my breathing. a long fly ball to left and i would have been so busted.)

nearly every night, nearly 162 games, for years and years. partly cause my older brother was a cubs fan and he beat me up every afternoon--and that's easy to say now, but "joke" about it, but it was fists slamming into my skull and belly over and over and over again every single day of my life, so i knew i had to come home to get abused every day as soon as school was over, like it wasn't horrible enough there already, it was at least a predictable bruising when i came home; it was brutal and i hated him, god how i hated him, that cruel bastard--so i not only hoped and prayed for every hit, every run every win for the sox, i hoped and prayed for the cubs to lose so that my team would beat his team, it was the one hope i had of beating that horrible evil guy who was beating the crap out of me every day to make it to the playoffs before his team and show him that we and they were better than him.

(the last paragraph i wrote while drunk in an email to my little sister a few weeks ago--cleaned it up a little tonight. i'm not angry now, but clearly it simmers just below. i didn't realize i was still angry for years and years until it suddenly came to a head in a bitter encounter this summer as i realized that the pattern had lived on through adulthood. and he didn't really get it when i told him, so it didn't go away. )

bucky dent before he went to the yankees was my favorite. partly cause he was really hot, too, and i couldn't quite grasp that, but i told myself it was cause he was a shortstop really good in the field and a good hitter who always seemed to have more potential than he realized, and jorge orta and a brief ron santo, and of course harry carrey before he turned traitor and went to the cubs, god, i never forgave him for that.

but they let me down just too many times, and i was losing interest in pro sports anyway, especially once i realized i didn't have to pretend to follow it to be a real man, so i finally let it go. but i will never forget the feeling.

and i was so happy for them tonight. and in a weird little way, even though i had nothing to do with it, for me.

and i emailed my brother the second it was over to demand my money.

hahaha. i have no idea what we bet--a dollar? seemed like a lot at the time. i think that's when we got five cents a week allowance, so that was nearly half a year's income.

whoever's team won the pennant first won.

who would have expected it to go on this long? they had the longest and second-longest streaks without one in baseball.

but not tonight.

and it feels good.

and i'm going to get to work on figuring out how to forgive my brother.

Charactericide

Tue, 04 Oct 2005 04:28:08 GMT

after 24 hours' reflection on the last post on Lars von Trier and Dancer in the Dark, i have decided that his crimes are far worse than i imagined.

and yet, curiously, i am all the more eager to forgive him.

(yeah, i still understand he surely doesn't give a shit. not the point.)

it's one thing to blind your protagonist, and betray her, and rob her at the most horribly inopportune moment, under the most incredibly tragic circumstances, and slip that gun into her hand at still worse moment, and time every one of the unexpected intrusions and rushes for help at the preposterously wrong moments to see and hear the most incriminating little snippets and nothing more, to create her far too simple to grasp any of the obvious routes out--except, curiously, the wily exit she does concoct, which works out perfectly, except for her, and . . . and on and on and on.

. . . one or two or perhaps six of those might be necessary, but this relentless piling on is just sadistic. especially to such a delicate, innocent, and delightfully rapturous creature. why not just club a fresh litter of cocker spaniels to death and be done with it?

and Breaking The Waves is coming into clearer focus, too. he really abused the hell out of Emily Watson's equally innocent character, if i recall.

a serial offender. of one of the heinous of all crimes available to the writer: charactericide.

we're omnipotent in these worlds we create, we can rape, rob and pillage to our hearts content, but should we?

i mean, seriously, there's a point, right? like abusing the mentally retarded. which this character nearly qualifies for, actually.

picture a film with a delightful retarded person, who was betrayed by a close friend, and then brutally tortured in all manner of emotional and physical abuse. at what point do you say, this is just a guy with sadistic fantasies--perhaps he should be forbidden from carrying firearms.

and yet . . .

though i see his authorial crimes more clearly this evening--all spilled out before me on a bike ride to get some carry-out, oddly enough; and the food got cold rushing in to type 3/4 of this in before i lost it--clearly, he can't help himself.

and clearly, it's a great talent he's servicing.

incredible stories. vibrant characters. stunning visuals. intense joy, even if he is always stepping in to (metaphorically) chop the petite little fingers right off a cheerful girl.

but he's trying his heart out. clearly. and succeeding a great deal.

the sadism is unnecessary, he could have and will make much better films without it. but he didn't know how. he's an artist, he had a vision, he believed in it, he followed it, and we suffered a bit for some of it, profited from the rest.

at least he had one. a bit screwed up, but how else you going to get anywhere? take a risk and see where it leads. at least he's in there swinging. swinging his little heart out.

Forgiving Lars

Mon, 03 Oct 2005 04:01:07 GMT

I have decided to forgive Lars von Trier.

I'm sure he will be relieved. Hahaha.

Apparently it's been nine years now that I've been furious with him, and like most lovers' spats that angry and that distant, I can't be sure what exactly it was about.

Dogma 95? The way he employed it in Breaking The Waves? Or was I deeply offended by the way that story played out?

All of them, I think, but couldn't swear to any of them, except the first.

God. Shaky cameras bug the shit out of me. They have their place to be sure, but it's a rare place, and you better have a damn good reason for it if you want to give me a freaking headache just trying to watch your film. (And do you really want me to have a headache while trying to absorb your film?)

Not to mention, it just reeks of that crap I had to endure occasionally in grad school, that pitiful attempt that generally uncreative people who envision themselves Great Artists always seem to be searching after: Art By Gimmick.

Forget the gimmicks, just concentrate on the art.

Pissed me off more because he had such obvious talent. Hence the lover analogy: yes, you really do reserve the most anger for the ones you love, or want to love, could love, if they just . . .

Hennyway.

Dancer in the Dark.

Whoa. Another tough movie to get through. (What was with me at the video store this weekend?)

(Before I get into it, let me get this much out of the way: Bjork is stupendous, Catherine Deneuve luminous. Of course)

For awhile I was bored numb, then I was horrified, then I was furious at him for his cruelty--cruelty to your characters can be unforgivable, especially such absolute ruthless cruelty.

Of course that's when I realized how completely sucked in I had become. Bjork's character was completely real to me, and I had become incredibly protective of her, and how how how could he be so simultaneously cruel to her in so many different ways?

But when he began to color his picture--ahhhhhhhh, the wonder of it.

But that was the cruelest part to us, because he didn't introduce the color until he was right about to slam us in the head with his first hammer, and it was so obvious it was coming that it was impossible to enjoy the sudden burst of exuberance, and then when the hammer hit right out cue, man, had we been set up.

And it kept on that way for the whole movie. No way to enjoy any of the joy, because it was all marred by such horror.

And yet . . .

I'm still not sure how I feel about this thing. It's only been three hours since it ended.

But I think . . .

I know he moved me and I think I like it. I think.

Update:

(In next post.)

good news, bad news, confusing news on my broken back

Mon, 03 Oct 2005 03:38:50 GMT

no, that title is not just a play on my latest obsession, Brokeback Mountain. i really did break my back 21 years ago.

first the background, then the latest development:

it was kind of a freak accident, while i was in the army, and it was pretty bad, so they sent me to the top army hospital. it was a burst fracture of my first lumbar vertebrae, L1. it was crushed to half its original height, and the bone fragments lodged in my spinal canal there, blocking (or occluding) 50% of the canal. miraculously, none of them severed my spinal cord. (at walter reed, they got my ct scan before they got me and assumed i was paralyzed from the pictures.)

i had a fusion of six vertebrae and two rods inserted, spent ten months in a body cast, and gradually returned to more or less normal, though my army career was abruptly over.

when i left walter reed, they told me a person in my condition had an 18% chance of paralysis somewhere down the road. and if it came, it would likely be complete paralysis below the fracture.

i figured my odds had gone down quite a bit by avoiding it this long, but i don't really know.

i've been kind of wondering where i stood for 20 years.

and then . . .

ok, i'm going to switch now, to the email i sent my family september 20. took me a day to write it to them, because i left the doctor feeling numb, emotionally. slightly zombified. and not completely clear why.

and it's taken me another couple weeks to post here, because . . . hmmmmm. because i've been busy writing and it set me back several days kind of in a weird state of shock, and because, hmmmm, maybe there are a few things not to share with the whole world.

but what the hell.

or why start now?

here goes. more from me after the email to them:

so my chronic back pain was getting progressively worse the past few years, so i finally called a back surgeon in june, the best in denver, supposedly. took me 3+ months to get an appointment, ct scan and back for my consult, which was yesterday.

very mixed picture, not sure what to make of it.

(and the picture is a little blurry, literally, compared to most pictures available today, because the rods in my back are metal, so they can't do an MRI, and ct scans are kind of scattered. much more clear than the x-rays, but not nearly as clear as the pix they're used to getting for most people.

good news: the 50% occlusion (blockage) in my spinal canal at L-1, the site of the breakage is gone. had no idea that was possible. my body somehow absorbed the bone chips or moved them or something.

bad news: i have developed a new occlusion right where the rods end, between L4 and L5. (nearly all the bending in your back is done by your five lumbar vertebrae. since 4 of mine are fused, my entire bending is done at that one point, and all the pressure is put on that one disk, instead of being spread among five. they told me back at Walter Reed that it was going to be hard on this spot.) looking at the ct scan it looks like a lot more than 50%, but it's in three regular kind of bubbles, not like jagged bone chips, if that matters.

i had also never actually seen my ct scan, so it was unexpectedly disturbing to actually see it for the first time, after all these years--not to mention in a different place than i was expecting it.

he said the occlusion was obviously not a good thing, but not necessarily huge danger, either. he had this kind of annoying not-so-good-not-so-bad take on nearly everything, which gave me no solid sense of anything. and at that spot, it was more likely to be causing shooting pain down my legs rather than the back pain i'd been having--which could be from any number of things. and the leg pain is the main sign of impending paralysis, so luckily i'm not having that, but scary to see potential precursors of it. but i've avoided it this long.

the rods look good though, and the vertebrae fused well, lots of bone matter there. (another big relief. when they took off the body cast, the doc was disappointed in how much bone had developed, but seemed resigned to no more progress and took it off. always left me kind of nervous. been wondering for 20 years. nice to see it eventually filled in.) that's all a relief.

(i've also had less severe but chronic neck trouble, so he had an MRI of that done, which showed two bulging disks--but only moderately bulging. again, the same no-disaster-but-not-great-news kind of attitude from him. wear and tear of life can cause that, happens to a lot of people, but a lot of them have chronic pain.

prognosis: no surgery or other drastic measures at this time. he's sending me to a rehab doctor who can try a variety of things over time, like physical therapy, medication, injections . . .

so i guess i'm just at the start of the road to treatment, still not even to the doc who will devise the initial plan after 3.5 months, which is also frustrating, but i guess this is how it works.

one other big bright spot. i had unrelated stress-muscle-pulls in my shoulder and bicep this summer, where tito prescribed heavy ibuprofen (4 advils at a time, three times a days) plus ice. then i slipped running down the carpeted stairs three weeks ago and hit my back really hard (been meaning to mention this), worst fall since the accident, couldn't get up at first, could barely walk for a few days. went to the elk grove doctor, and he prescribed the same regime. and the ibuprofen relieved my chronic back pain, too. completely when i was on it, but quite a bit of it while i was off it, too. (i stayed on it nearly a month, the first time, and apparently i relieved the chronic inflammation in my back.) so there's prolly a lot of relief options out there.

just not sure what to make of all this. has left me kind of numb and slightly disturbed/unnerved. mostly i think i expected more clear black-and-white answers after wondering for 20 years, but i guess that was unrealistic. realistic or not, that was my expectation, though, and all i have is this muddiness. i don't like mud.

but i'll prolly feel much better about it soon. especially if this rehab doc starts taking away the pain.

just unsettled about the future. odd, because i had thought i had come to terms with it being a big question mark. maybe it was just that it was the same question mark, and one i had grown used to, just the same thing hanging there that i barely even noticed it, or minded it. now it's kind of a different question mark, and everything is stirred up again. just can't shake this queasy feeling. hopefully i will soon.

d

a few minutes later, i sent a similar messages to a few friends, with this preamble:

i didn't really know what i thought when i started writing it, or why it was bothering me. now i know why i felt numb for the past 20 hours: because i had too many contradictory feelings and didn't understand where some of them were coming from. writing it sorted it out. i feel a lot better now. at least i know what i'm feeling.

and i'm kind of ticked with that doc. but i have also written out the key questions i have, beginning w/ the bottom line: at walter reed, they were very blunt about my odds at each step. when i left, the head of ortho was very precise about his wording, and figures: 18% of people in a condition like mine would develop full paralysis below the point of impact at some point in their lives. if i felt a tingling in my legs, get to a hospital immediately. the new films show my situation miraculously better at L1, but much worse and apparently progressive at L5. are my odds better or worse than 18%? that's my biggest bottom line.

(especially since statistically my odds improve each year that i don't become part of the 18%. so i had assumed i might be way below 10% by now. and now: who knows. where the hell am i at, that's the question.)

but feeling much better that i'm understanding how/why i'm feeling, and also gathering the questions to call him. i'm going to give it a day or two, so i'm sure i've compiled them all.

and a frag from another:

i've been wondering where i stood for 20 years, and was anticipating clarity and instead got muddier. for now. felt shitty this morning but already starting to get past it. partly because i jotted down the specific questions i'm going to call the doc with to follow up.

i did feel a lot better after that. and then angrier at that doc, and then more proactive about all the things i was going to do, and then, gradually . . . i guess, just used to it again.

it really does seem it was mostly a matter of stirring it up again. for years after it happened, it felt like this huge cloud hanging over me, but after a decade or two i sort of got used to the cloud.

used to it enough to undo some big compromises, too. mainly the career compromise. after the accident i went back to college and changed my major to math and computer science, specifically for the purpose of insuring i could support myself--and all my medical needs and somebody to care for me round the clock and all--if i was paralyzed down the line. stephen hawking became my role model.

that lasted about ten years.

the writing tugged at me so badly and the scare of incapacitation had faded enough that i chucked a lucrative career and went back to grad school in creative writing.

yeah, i got used to it.

and then, yow. not necessarily bad news--maybe even good news, just very unclear news--and suddenly it's all open again, and that cloud, i suddenly feel it right on my back again. ugh.

or i did. doesn't seem to have taken ten years to shake free of it this time. i have a feeling it will be back--like the day i go to see the rehab doc, perhaps, and i have still not made the appointment--and who knows how many other times, but for now . . . it's just gone again. i don't care again.

i can't make myself care. it's this weird thing. it's sort of like the period after my mentor lucia died last fall. after a week of distress, i suddenly couldn't feel a thing for awhile. (until the week leading up to the funeral, as everyone made arrangements to come back to colorado, and our own little Big Chill weekend loomed, and it came rushing back with a vengeance.)

i'm not expecting a vengeance this time. not sure about that, but not predicting it. for now, i'm fine. and i think i will be.

New Comments thread for The Columbine Almanac

Tue, 27 Sep 2005 20:07:08 GMT

In October 2003, I created a comments thread for The Columbine Almanac.

After 20 screens of comments, it filled up awhile back, and I forgot to create a new thread. Sorry. Here's one now, via this post. I will link to both threads in the almanac.

And if you're interested in Columbine and haven't checked it out lately, you might want to take a peak. I have added a whole lot of new stuff over the past several months, as I have waded deeper through the evidence, particularly to Section 4: Key Sites--Specific Data.

Trey Parker is adorable!

Tue, 27 Sep 2005 19:43:49 GMT

Just freaking adorable.

(OK, one quickie daytime post. This just lit me up. Gotta get it out.)

My apologies for starting with that somewhat shallow and immature sentiment instead of something serious, but after 20 minutes with these guys, and all the hilarious, enlightening and above all inspiring things they had to say, the honest truth is, that is the one irresistible thought bouncing round my brain right now.

God. These two are a freaking riot.

Oh. Context. They were on Charlie Rose last night. Sort of a mindfuck right there, Charlie & The South Park Boys, which they commented on, of course: now we've won and Emmy, we've done charlie rose, how do you stay punk after that? heeheehee.

(Of course it makes sense as well, Charlie loves to have influential people from any realm of culture, though he does tend to lag nearly as far behind as Time magazine, and it has taken him nine years to get these pop culture titans. But still. The contrast is quite amusing. Also amusing that Charlie pointed out he had been a character on both South Park and The Simpsons.)

Hennyway, just watching while I had a bite. Usually use Charlie as radio, but these two were just too delightful to look away. Even as talking heads, they're fun to watch.

And delightful is not a word I'm too comfortable using out loud too often, but sometimes a slightly uncomfortable word just fits.

They are so giddy! That's the best part of watching them: not even the way they crack me up--though they do--but the way they crack themselves up. They talk about how the show is such a grind, not fun at all--hmmmm, sort of like writing, much of the time--but unintended inspiration here is, their LIVES are so much fun. Not by design, I'm sure, they just enjoy the hell out of existence.

That or they just popped a couple amyl nitrate capsules before they went on.

And not just laughter, their faces are just so damn expressive, particularly Trey. (And how did I overlook how handsome he was before? Great. Why does it always have to be the straight one. At least I think he's straight.)

I had to pause the Tivo right now to grab my laptop and type this on the couch, because Charlie has just asked Trey if he's a libertarian, and after a quick duck and Charlie's insistence, Trey is literally biting his lower lip trying to bring himself to -- presumably, I'm in freeze-frame anticipating his answer -- admit it.

OK, unfroze. In his best Newhart stutter, "It's, it's possible."

Heeheehee.

Just too freaking adorable for words.

---

OK, I really wanted to end on that note. But then . . .

Charlie--and here's why we love him--plays along wonderfully for most of the exchange, but doesn't let him duck, and at the end, asks Matt Stone, incredulously the exact question running through every audience member's mind, but that nobody else in the business but he and Oprah and maybe Katie Couric would actually spit out: "Why is he embarrassed by this?"

Matt laughs, Trey says, "I'm not embarrassed at all, it's just a difficult question."

Charlie is still more incredulous. "Why is it difficult!"

"Because it's it's . . .

"It's like saying are you . . .?"

Charlie loses the balls to finish that one.

First awkward pause of the interview. Finally, from Trey:

"It's like are you gay? It's like . . . a little."

He explodes with laughter. His face totally contorted in laughter.

{Editor's note: Yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!! He's joking I'm sure--almost sure--but yea anyway for the tiny little idea of opening. Wait, he's not through yet:}

Raising his arms, palms up, like his eyebrows, "On a Friday night, maybe." Suddenly quiet, faux serious. "No chick around . . . sure."

Lots of laughs all around. And then a more serious explanation. And yet another thing I have in common with them. Ahhhhhh. Too bad it's just the odd Friday night.

But who knows, maybe Matt will drag him to check out our latest gaybar, won't be many chicks around there. And it just happens to be a Friday night spot. Hmmmmm.

Bigger hmmm. I seem to have just blogged through the rest of my lunch break. Can't even watch the rest of the interview. (But something to look forward to at 4 p.m. snack.)

Nice to have something to be proud of from Colorado. Eager to get back to writing to be the next thing.

NOTICE: See you on the weekends

Mon, 26 Sep 2005 18:17:40 GMT

Hey. You might have noticed I'm rarely here during the week these days.

Yes, by design. Trying to keep my focus entirely on my book during the week. Hence the big one-day bursts on Saturdays and Sundays. So look for me then. (Or on Mondays when you get back to trolling the web at the office, while your boss is away. heeheehee.)

OK, better try that bigger:

LOOK FOR ME MOSTLY ON THE WEEKENDS UNTIL THIS BOOK IS DONE!

Occasionally I may stop by in an evening, if I've had a great day and deserve an indulgence, or maybe once in awhile for a quickie. (Like just now. I figured since I was here to let you know this, I could pound out a quick reaction to the Housewives.)

But hopefully you'll see a lot of self-control.

See you Saturday.

Faulkner rules!

Sun, 25 Sep 2005 18:52:31 GMT

That title feels a bit silly to me now, but I could imagine no other heading when I first envisioned this post two months ago, so I couldn't forgive myself if I committed it now.

Sorry for the delay. So busy.

But I did what Oprah told me this summer, and picked up my beautiful little boxed set of three Faulkners.

Thanks to everyone who wrote in with suggestions on the order to approach them. I decided Oprah's handlers prolly knew what they were doing by leading me into As I Lay Dying out of written sequence, and plunged in there.

Wow.

For about 60 pages, I was annoyed and perplexed. This shit was really confusing, and to what end? Not an insight anywhere in sight, a group of--I'm sorry, but illiterate southern prairiebillies from half a century ago with no original thoughts on their existence, and absolutely no connection whatsoever to my life.

That was embarrassing to admit. Sorry about the bigoted part. Didn't like feeling those things about "dumb southerners," wasn't ready to admit it at the time, but yes, those thoughts were in there, despite having lived a good chunk of my life in the south and finding just as many intelligent people there as I have in the north, east and west (all of which I have lived in.)

Then, somewhere around page 60 I started to get the hang of how to read him--chiefly, that when it suddenly made no sense, that was OK; don't get so damn frazzled that you have to know everything every moment; just read on, and all will be revealed in time, and luckily almost always within a few pages. That ability--and my new-found willingness--to just ride out the confusion and uncertainty actually started to feel exhilarating.

So he stopped being such a royal pain in the ass relatively quickly, but I was still wondering what the payoff was supposed to be.

The exact moment, I don't remember. Really dawned on me gradually. And I'm not even going to try to recount it here. But these people had SO much to enlighten me with. They were uneducated, and a few of them were freaking stupid to boot, but most of them . . . man.

I was just overwhelmed by the insights these people had buried inside them. And the way Faulkner told his story. And the way the story kept twisting and twisting and twisting again. Not the plot, the . . . hmmmmm. Words are failing me. The revelations? Of both style and content, I guess, they way they were woven so intricately and perfectly together.

Every ten pages or so I just gasped, and though, Wow, this alone makes this book extraordinary. And then ten pages later . . .

Faulkner rules!

A week with the ferners

Sun, 25 Sep 2005 18:36:25 GMT

Have you been watching Charlie Rose all week?

Presumably because of the big UN meeting, he had access to a wealth of foreign leaders, and took full advantage.

At first I thought it was overkill, or at least overload. I heard myself whining Oh not another ferner! around Wednesday. Too much heavy stuff, too many heavy accents to wade through, too much of the unfamiliar.

I use Charlie as radio when I'm cooking, cleaning, puttering, and sometimes I'm in the mood for a little levity. The arts stuff is always appreciated.

And painful as it is to admit, thick foreign accents are not always pleasant to my ears, and it can be wearying to untangle them.

And I didn't, frankly. I kept putting them off, letting them stack up on the Tivo.

So by the time I actually got around to listening to Wednesday's broadcast, I was in a little bit of heaven.

A bit of immersion actually makes the accents go down easier. A lot of it turned out to be initial reluctance.

And lack of the familiar turned into the thrill of the freshness.

Also refreshing to hear a stream of politicians not bullshitting. Prolly cause they weren't playing to their own domestic markets, they were remarkably candid. Of course they still all have agendas--every guest on the show does, from every field--but they're never going to be running for re-election here. About the only hardcore bullshitter of the group was the new Iraqi (president? I've already expunged the memory. Nothing but total unadulterated crap.) Which of all places, is pretty disconcerting to find it.

Most refreshing and enlightening goes to India's finance minister. Really helped open a window for me to a whole new world out there I often forget about in this country. Lots of reflection on both India and China, where more than a third of the planet lives. Amazing how little we think about them.

And I've been to India, I was surrounded by Indians for two years in Kuwait, I had an Indian assistant who I was very close to and and Indian boss for a year, it's not like these people are new to me. But so easy to let them slip away.

yet another love/hate relationship

Thu, 15 Sep 2005 21:23:32 GMT

You guys are so great sending me all the emails, but you really should consider putting them into the comments, so everyone can share. (They're a lot more insightful than the comments crap I read on most blogs.)

Bill, who will otherwise remain anonymous since I didn't ask permission just responded, in part, to my message about Faulkner, a ways back, that I am so delinquent in following up on. He writes:

My favorite quote from As I Lay Dying, Addie Bundren says,

"He had a word, too. Love, he called it. But I had been used to words for a long time. I knew that that word was like the others: just a shape to fill a lack; that when the right time came, you wouldn't need a word for that anymore than for pride or fear. Cash did not need to say it to me nor I to him, and I would say, Let Anse use it, if he wants to. So that it was Anse or love; love or Anse: it didn't matter."

You writers have a love/hate relationship with words.....

Hahaha. Never thought about that. Even when I read that passage. Loved the hell out of that passage as well, but never noticed the contradiction. Or at least the paradox.

Then I was about to accuse Bill of forcing the other Bill's demons onto me, when I realized I share that love/hate relationship exactly. Why do I think I responded so strongly to the scene?

Ahhhhhhh. The things we will never see in our own reflection. Thanks for pointing that one out. Now what the hell am I going to do with it?

Before Sunset

Thu, 15 Sep 2005 18:41:23 GMT

So you want to make a talking heads movie. Nothing more than two people chatting for the duration--walking along an avenue, stopping at a cafe, etc., with very occasional developments in the physical world, but nearly every development in the film flowing out of their mouths.

Pretty bold. Or more likely stupid. Arrogant? Prolly.

Even when the Talking Heads made a movie, they filled it with a lot more than just standing there performing their wonderful songs.

Better be some damn good talking. Wonderful insights about the magical moments that illuminate our lives, and small touching developments about the personal conflict transpiring between them.

Who the hell could pull that off? Especially the Big Ideas stuff? Lots of stories get the intimate stuff right, but 999 times out of a thousand the Big Shit just sounds like a big load of crap. Even when they reach for those insights only for a moment or two.

If I had realized going in that was all this movie amounted to, it's highly unlikely I would have ever wasted my time on it.

Thank God for that ignorance.

Ethan Hawke, I guess, that's what kept me away all this time--from both films, Before Sunset and the film it followed up on nine years later, Before Sunrise. Seems like such a mealy mouthed guy alternately posing as a hardass stud or intellectual. Wasn't buying either one.

I might buy the intellectual now. (He shares a screenplay credit with his costar and director.) And I don't mind looking at him anymore, even if he would be infinitely more pleasing without all that wispy kudzu he can't really grow creeping around his mouth.

And I'm finally sold on him as an actor, because this kind of stuff is really hard to pull off, and he does it pretty well.

He has the misfortune, in that respect, of doing it opposite someone absolutely spellbinding. And so dazzling in all the little moves she makes it's impossible not to believe this is not only her, but a changing picture of her, riding through a dizzying onslaught of contradictory feelings about what's happening to her, what it says about her life, how she feels about that.

Sometimes he appears a bit . . . like an actor delivering his lines really well across from her, which sounds harsh and debilitating, but what I really mean is she makes nearly every actor in every play or movie seem in retrospect like at best a really good actor, he just has the bad luck or courage to do it in front of her.

Seriously. He's good, very good, sometimes even great. She just puts the lie to everyone else in the universe.

Never seen anyone quite like her. Obviously.

I'm sure I've seen other people just as good. But not today. (Or last night. Just listened to the first half again just now as I did the breakfast dishes.) They will return again soon I'm sure to their rightful places in my memory, but for now she eclipses all that came before her on my little cubicle on the planet.

Meanwhile. The personal story progresses wonderfully. I won't spoil the ending for anyone yet to see it, except to assure you you won't be disappointed. If you're me. Perfect note. Perfect ending. Not too much, not too little, Goldilocks.

And the Ideas. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

My favorite was his sudden lament (now I will be spoiling lots of little things, and they won't do you much good without the details anyway. I'm quite sure from past experience that they'll sound like so much pseudo-intellectual bullshit naked on the page here, but for those of you already relishing the memories, perhaps this will jog a few. Of course I'm ultimately being selfish here: hope to return many times to meander around inside them myself. And by many I mean six. Roughly. If I had to predict, I'd say an hour from now, a week, 47 days, eight years, eight years and one hour, eight years and three days, 17 years and 42. If I should be so lucky. And I expect to. Huh. Eight. Never seem to get these things right, do I? But close.)

OK, my favorite was his sudden lament, late in the game, when he started unveiling more of the truth, that his sex life was abysmal, like one of those Trappist monks he'd been talking about, ten times in four years, maybe, and she starts laughing at him, and he's a little hurt--you think that's funny?--and she explains no, no, I'm not laughing at your sex life, I'm just wondering where these monks who get to have sex ten times every four years?

heeheehee. I love that for so many reasons. I love the way this movie caught me time and again and again on so many of the tiny little lies I tell myself, that like the dry patches in my sex life equating to a monk's existence. I will never even grasp a whisper of the experience of monastic life, yet I'm so damn quick to claim their burden.

Ahhhhhh. Springs to mind a Dubious Achievement Award Esquire presented Mariette Hartley a few decades ago--remember Mariette Hartley? from the Polaroid commercials as the Mrs. James Garner, mainly--for saying she had been monogamous off and on for the past several years. "On and off who, Marriette?" was the headline I believe. (". . . off what"? which is funnier? sometimes I don't know these things.)

Hennyway. Jotted a whole bunch more down on an old newspaper lying on the couch that I kept running back to from the sink with soapy hands and soiling it and soaking parts of the page, so I had to keep rotating around to different open spots. Luckily it was a full page Visa ad with lots and lots of white space to capture my elation.

(Hmmmm. It has dried now, because I got a phone call halfway through the last paragraph and had to break. Curled and lumpy, but I think I can still make most of it out. Better do it soon, so I can still remember what the hell I was talking about with some of my soiled scrawls, but I've got to run for awhile, so this will have to satiate you for now.)

Update/Epilogue:

Wow, just looked up Before Sunset's boxoffice and it sure didn't do much. $5.6 million for it's entire North American run. Great per-theatre averages, but it never played more than 202 theatres or ranked higher than 19th for the week.

Didn't realize what a tiny little arthouse hit this was. Which both saddens and inspires me.

Such a wonderful little film and that's as much of the audience it can penetrate?

Or that's as little as it penetrated the marketplace and still it made such an impact on our collective psyche? Everyone I know has seen this film or intends to, talks about it, at least is aware of it. It seeped its way in.

I realize my friends are not very representative of the population at large, but they are far more representative of the creative population responsible for producing all the future films, books, movies, etc. It's ripples will not be forgotten.

Cause we're not sure how

Mon, 25 Jul 2005 19:09:05 GMT

we're tryin'
we're hopin'
we're hurtin'
we're lovin'
we're cryin'
we're callin'
'cause we're not sure how
this goes

The real test of how deeply a scene moves me is how long it lingers on my Tivo. I don't know what I think I'm going to do with it. How many times can you watch the same scene.

Enough, I guess. Six or eight times so far on this one, I guess. Even more than that final OC Hallelujah sequence. Because it's not quite that powerful. Yeah, the deeper it hits, the harder to watch. I have really steal myself for that one.

This one feels more comforting. Although when I do watch it, it tends to tear me up.

It's from that mortician show, Six Feet Under. About three weeks ago. When the mom's sort-of friend dies and all the old hippie ladies gather and the cranky old mom actually smokes pot with them. And then they slowly mumble their way into and then erupt with Calling All Angels.

(Hmmmmm. Angels? Hallelujah? OK, don't go looking for a pattern just yet. Except perhaps desperate characters looking in the direction desperate people are sometimes wont to look.)

Like all great filmed song sequences, it feels written especially for the scene at hand, until the cutaways start, and you think, God, no, it was written for those.

And this show has no shortage of broken, hurting, tragic, borderline pathetic characters trying to fumble their way through a preplexing existence to cut away to.

Which makes me feel a lot better about the show, suddenly.

Becasue this planet sure has no shortage of broken, hurting, tragic, borderline pathetic characters trying to fumble their way through a preplexing existence to cut away to.

Hmmmm. This prolly wouldn't be the best time to dump on this show. Let's just say it has disappointed me a bit. Since I moved up from indigent status and splurged on an HBO subscription, and actually started Tivoing the show.

I had caught scattered episodes from previous seasons, and the last handful from the end of last season, but this is the first season I've been able to watch in sequence.

Not sure what all the fuss is about. I kind of like it. I love a lot of things about it. But I can't say I love it.

Has it faded? Am I tuning into the waning years? Or the years never intended to stand on their own, firmly rooting in the developments of the previous several seaons?

I have this weird anticipation/annoyance reaction to a new episode approaching. Part of me can't wait to see the next development, but an equal half is eager to see something else.

Because not that much does usually develop, and 90% of what does is a real downer. Sad material I'm fine with, but these people can just be so whiny! Especially Nate. I just want to slap that guy.

(That guy, especially. He's the only one I'm not sure I actually buy. He's not just whining all the time, he's kind of perplexing. Almost arbitrary in his actions, except they have the one thing in common that they are always certain to undo him.)

But it definitely has its moments.

At least twice an episode I find myself smiling hard, the kind that just keeps radiating long after the show has ended.

And then the Calling All Angels sequence. God. I could watch an entire season of a show just for one gift like that.

It's a kd lang song, by the way. Couldn't even remember where I knew it from, until I googled. Ahhhhhhhhhh. The Until The End of the World soundtrack. (Quite the soundtrack.) Sung by Jane Siberry.

Another taste:

calling all angels
calling all angels
walk me through this one
don't leave me alone
calling all angels
calling all angels
we're cryin' and we're hurtin'
and we're not sure why...

We're not sure how. And we're not sure why.

Hmmmm. Obviously, she's been peeking in on my life.

Wednesday Update:

Nice piece on the show, and specifically Nate, and his possible heart attack/stroke, today from Salon's brilliant Heather Havrilesky.

She nicely capsulizes much of what bugs me about the sortof central character:

Nate has always been an ingrate. What's brilliant about him, as a character, is that he embodies the very worst of the so-called sensitive, liberal, enlightened, privileged white world. He has a cushy job, a smart, beautiful wife, a reasonably sane family, and an adorable daughter who never babbles on tediously like most toddlers. So what does Nate do? He goes crawling off to screw a relative stranger and tricks himself into believing that his infidelity is a piece of some greater search for meaning.

In other words, Nate embodies all of our selfish urges and all of our pathetic rationalizations for indulging those urges. He's a big, sad child who finds it impossible to connect with those who actually matter to him, who are in his life, who care, and instead goes running after wholesome-seeming strangers whose complicated needs aren't apparent to him yet.

Glad I'm not a penguin

Sat, 23 Jul 2005 06:58:17 GMT

"I couldn't help thinking how easy we have it," my friend said on the way out.

I think I've got it hard enough, actually, but those emperor penguins. Man.

Doesn't quite seem the most sensible approach to life, exactly, though it seems to be working for them.

Just saw March of the Penguins. Amazing. Even better than I thought. And I thought it would be pretty good. The buzz has sure been relentless. (93% rating on rottentomatoes.)

Smart move to lead with the sex scene. Not quite the opening, but in the first ten minutes. Who knew how erotic these creatures were. How sensual. Long slow caresses along each others' cheeks, and necks, right up to the edge of her long, curving beak.

They cut away too quickly, though. Far less sex than you'd see on a national geographic tv special. But it was so tender, so intimate--despite happening right out in the open in front of every other adult emperor penguin in the world--I suspect the filmmakers realized their audience would relate to it in a far more personal way than barnyard animals or "wild beasts" going at it, and dropping the camera angle a few feet would have been interpretted as pornography.

Which gives you a sense just how powerful this movie could be in its stronger moments. (And how much more powerful it could have been with a gutsier filmmaker, unafraid to pull back at moments like these. I guess they were more interested in keeping their G rating than the greatness of their art.)

But the sex scene was not about the sex. It was about the affection. And the intimacy. Just like great human sex.

And it profoundly challenges one of our basic notions of how we love each other. I can't imagine any human watching this without being struck by the intensity of the intimacy between each penguin pair. With another pair two feet to the right, another two feet to the left, to the front, to the back, pairs surrounding them for acres and acres, literally every adult of their species in the entire world.

Somewhere along the line, we got so caught up in our privacy, that we pretty much equate intimacy with it. Privacy doesn't always produce intimacy, but intimacy requires privacy. That's our 21st century American equation.

But you look at these exquisite penguins and it's clear that we've imposed that. Replace each one with a person--which at this point in this film, I assume 95% of the audience is already doing--and suddenly intimcay takes on a completely different character. The privacy only matters if you let it.

Each pair is so completely locked on to each other, the world around them doesn't seem to exist. If somebody else is watching, that's their business. I'm not letting that stand in the way of my exchange of affection with my little penguin mate.

And then we move on the product of this amazing love.

The egg. Oh my God, what they go through to protect that egg. I'm not going to spoil it for you, but you will not believe what they go endure. Mother and father. Equally, but separately.

And when we see one crack. God. Didn't quite bring me to tears--more like stunned horror--but when the mother cried. If that doesn't break your heart you're not human. Or penguin.

Mainly, I was astounded by how fragile their survival is. Every single emperor penguin on the planet is born in the same spot near the south pole. Every single one returns to that spot year after year to mate. What if something happened to that spot?

What if it does? When, not if. God knows we can't keep our mits off anything.

How could it possibly have gone on like this for (hundreds of thousands?) of years?

And not just the spot itself--it seems like they're incredibly vulnerable bunching the entire population together like that. What if a ferocious storm wipes out the entire colony? Or they get cut down in the march back and can't make it to the sea in time in the annual race against starvation? All the males or all the females wiped out.

I'm sure it's happened. Many times, I presume. I guess that's what all the youngsters in the ocean are for. The ones too young to make the march. When the entire adult colony--or one entire gender from it--is wiped out, it must be up to them to gradually repopulate.

Wow.

And imagine the mating fights the next year, after all the adults of one gender have been wiped out, save the young batch making their first trek.

Which leads me to wonder what the next documentary on this species will be like. God knows where we are right now in one of those cycles.

In this film, the females are the ones fighting for their men at mating time, because there are slightly more of them. Are there? Or maybe there just have been since we've been studying them. How long could that have been? Maybe we're still in a recovery cycle since that last male wipeout.

I have a feeling we're just starting to understand them.

But what we know already . . .

It was glorious.

Fear

Thu, 30 Jun 2005 00:21:53 GMT

Watching Brian Wilson on Charlie Rose.

Took me years to get how this guy was a genius--just sounded like bubblegum pop to my eight-year-old ears--but I'm totally getting it now. The appearance 40 years later of the phantom album Smile finally bumped me over the top.

I didn't even buy the disk--as usual, I was just kind of afraid to. Afraid of being let down, of course. How could it ever live up to the 40 years of awe?

But I just heard enough of it played on the radio, with enough articulate commentary, that--as with most classics--I discovered how so many of the little things I take for granted now in pop music didn't exist until Brian Wilson invented them.

Oh.

And now here he is with Charlie, describing it as "a wonderful, jovial, happy teenage symphony to God. It's a three-movement rock opera. It's got heroes and villians . . ."

Wow. What have I been waiting for? Who cares if it's not perfection?

What do I think held it back for 40 years? God.

Brian can't quite admit it when Charlie asks him that question. He says the world wasn't ready for it. But Charlie is stepping lightly, painfully aware that he's dealing with a man who's been in and out of mental institutions for years, on very shaky mental ground. So he accepts the answer greaciously and moves on. For awhile.

We all know Charlie's problem of answering his own question, but he can also be extremely adept. He waits for the right moment. He sifts through a long, interesting passage of Brian explaining how driven he was to be a perfectionist. And then Brian explains that he has a sandox next to his piano in the living room, because it takes him back to the beach. "It takes away fear. It takes fear out of me when I sit in the sandbox. It takes the fear out of me. All the fear."

"Fear has always been there," Charlie says.

"Always."

"Fear of failure," Brian continues. He enumerates a long list, and Charlier returns to fear of failure, then asks:

"Is it fair to say that you didn't release this for so long, not because you waited for the world to catch up, because you feared that it would not be--"

"Yes. I feared that it wouldn't go over with people. That it would bomb out, no one would like it. That I'd get bad reviews. People would say, 'No, I don't like that album! I don't like it at all!' Those are some of my fears."

Yow. That is so heartbreaking to listen to. Forty freaking years. One of the great musical masterpieces of our age. All because of fear. Because he knew it was his masterpiece and he needed it to be perfect and he was terrified that was a level he couldn't quite achieve.

Like listening to a tape recording of my own shrink sessions. God, at least he waited till he was creating masterpieces. Heeheehee. I know I'm a long way from there, still, but I want every piece to be exquisite, as perfect as I know how to create right now, and I can still never measure up to that. Shuts me down something awful.

No, I'm not talking about my book, thank God. I've been working on this side project for a little while now, a magazine piece, and it had me bottled up for ages. Wanted so badly to get it all right, and it was so hard to sort it all out and feel secure that I was capturing this guy, that I was being fair to him--fair about his achievements and his flaws--and that I was making the prose truly sing. God. So much. So scary. But only because I let it.

And then I sit here this afternoon watching Brian Wilson, and good God, this is what it comes to when you let the fear assume control.

Could I ask for a more vivid cautionary tale, right there on my TV screen?

Luckily, he was able to salvage some of it before he died. But all those other masterpieces he had inside him, all those decades of potential sanity and happiness. I don't want to lose all those. Time to get a handle on this fear thing.

The journalist, my hero and the murderer

Wed, 15 Jun 2005 07:03:33 GMT

I had to stop reading the cover story Salon just posted after the first page.

Nothing lacking in the material, or Andrew O'Hehir's treatment of it, quite the reverse.

It's past 11, so the bookstores here are closed, but first thing in the morning, I'm hopping on my bike to snag a copy of Michael Finkel's book True Story.

The subhead of the Salon story capsulizes it expertly:

A disgraced New York Times reporter learns his identity has been stolen by an all-American hunk who killed his wife and three children. The result is the most unlikely "True Story" you'll ever read.

And then there's the starred Pub Weekly review:

In 2001, Finkel fabricated portions of an article he wrote for the New York Times Magazine. Caught and fired, he retreated to his Montana home, only to learn that a recently arrested suspected mass murderer had adopted his identity while on the run in Mexico. In this astute and hypnotically absorbing memoir, Finkel recounts his subsequent relationship with the accused, Christian Longo, and recreates not only Longo's crimes and coverups but also his own. In doing so, he offers a startling meditation on truth and deceit and the ease with which we can slip from one to the other. The narrative consists of three expertly interwoven strands. One details the decision by Finkel, under severe pressure, to lie within the Times article—ironic since the piece aimed to debunk falsehoods about rampant slavery in Africa's chocolate trade—and explores the personal consequences (loss of credibility, ensuing despair) of that decision. The second, longer strand traces Longo's life, marked by incessant lying and petty cheating, and the events leading up to the slayings of his wife and children. The third narrative strand covers Finkel's increasingly involved ties to Longo, as the two share confidences (and also lies of omission and commission) via meetings, phone calls and hundreds of pages of letters, leading up to Longo's trial and a final flurry of deceit by which Longo attempts to offload his guilt. Many will compare this mea culpa to those of Jayson Blair and Stephen Glass, but where those disgraced journalists led readers into halls of mirrors, Finkel's creation is all windows. There are, notably, no excuses offered, only explanations, and there's no fuzzy boundary between truth and deceit: a lie is a lie. Because of Finkel's past transgression, it's understandable that some will question if all that's here is true; only Finkel can know for sure, but there's a burning sincerity (and beautifully modulated writing) on every page, sufficient to convince most that this brilliant blend of true-crime and memoir does live up to its bald title.

The key for me was "a burning sincerity (and beautifully modulated writing) on every page."

Which brings me to my strange connection to this man.

I've never met him or spoken to him. But when the scandal broke, I was stunned. He had just recently been christened my hero. Writing hero.

I will confess here that a glorious afternoon in Novemeber 2001 was the day I discovered The New York Times Magazine was not the piece of crap I had always assumed it must be. Here were the two key facts previously at my disposal:

1) Most of the so-called magazines inserted in Sunday newspapers are something of a joke, or at least they were when I was getting started in journalism, and I'd never gone back to see if any of that had changed.

2) As great as the reporting can be in the Times, the writing tends toward the flat, dry and artless.

So I assumed the magazine was even worse.

But then I had a story to sell and my agent assured me the Times magazine under Adam Moss ranked near the top of the heap, so I pitched it to them and they weren't quite ready to bite, but interested. So I went to the Denver library, piled up a stack of recent issues and began the dreadful task of wading through some of the stories.

My dread ended almost immediately. The writing was crisp, lively and engaging. Nearly every story. But one leapt out so far above the others, I photocopied it, tucked it into my bag and cleared a special place for it on my writing desk. From the opening line, I was transported. Every time I felt lost or drained of inspiration, I flipped through it and smiled. And remembered how great it felt to inhale wondrous writing. And every time, I found my voice again, because he reminded me what I was looking for.

He hadn't exactly knocked Nabokov off my pedestal, but he was alive and young, and traveling the world writing exactly the sort of stories I wanted to cover exactly the way I would like to be writing them, for a publication I would love to see them appear in.

The piece was sitting just a few inches from my fingertips as I sat at the computer five months later, April 14, 2002, and typed in nytimes.com to check out Frank Rich's column. The editor's note caught my eye first. The story ''Is Youssouf Malé a Slave?'' had been something of a fraud--a composite character presented as an individual. And Michael Finkel, my new hero, had been fired.

I was mad at him for awhile. For all the obvious reasons, and for depriving me of my hero and of fresh examples to inspire me. Of a career to inspire me, to aspire to. For doing it to himself. He might have become one of the great writers of our day. How could he sabotage himself like that? And why?

I talked to several journo friends about it, and they were equally baffled. I think one of them interviewed him and wrote about it, and remained baffled, though now I can't remember who.

But I was also afraid. That places like the Times magazine would be warier of trusting unproven writers like me. That the public would trust us even less than they did now. And just this odd sense of fear, that somehow I could be someday drawn into the same temptation. When a role model reveals corruption, what does that say about the person who chose him? Just bad luck, probably, but the scary little fears that I was somehow tainted or infected by the association stuck with me more than a year.

I still think about him from time to time. And that no matter what he did or why he did it, he was still an amazing writer. I figured we hadn't heard the last of him. He would probably have to give up journalism, but that would hopefully just force him into a novel, and we might soon be wading through the next Sheltering Sky.

So now this. I actually heard about the story on a plane nearly two weeks ago, but too busy to follow up till I got back to Denver this week. I could have sworn it was written up in the Vanity Fair with Angelina Jolie on the cover, but couldn't find it in there the past two days.

Kinda glad now. Read just enough tonight to know it was time to stop reading and get the book. I'll let you know how it turns out.

Update:

Got the book as planned, engrossed from the first page. He's intercutting two stories at first, and each time he cuts away from one I can hardly bear it. That's good. Very good.

Halleluljah

Fri, 27 May 2005 19:59:34 GMT

They're rerunning The OC this year.

Hmmmmmm. The title may appear like a response to that first line. Not exactly. I have often gushed that wantonly, but I wouldn't cheapen that word that way at this moment.

They started with the finale of the first season, which I missed due to a Tivo glitch that still had me smarting. Wow. Ryan leaves at the end. Had me all blubbery several times, but I had no idea. The doorbell rang, he turned to go, and . . . the most beautiful guitar notes began. So familiar, but I couldn't place them. Until Jeff Buckley started to sing:

I've heard there was a secret chord
that David played, and it pleased the Lord
But you don't really care for music, do you?
It goes like this
the fourth, the fifth
The minor fall, the major lift
The baffled king composing hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah

Man. And that's just the first verse.

One of my all-time favorites, and I have only the vaguest conception why. Some of its power I'm aware of, but something else moves it me, moves very powerfully, that I can't come close to grasping. (In a way that only Leonard Cohen songs ever seem to. Hmmmmm. I wonder if Josh named the lead characters after Leonard.)

For the next three and a half minutes--the last of the season--Josh Schwartz told his story entirely in pictures; while three more amazing verses of that song ripped my heart out. And I don't mean he pieced together some cheesy montage. I mean he told a story in pictures. It had a plot, powerful characters, harsh choices, moral dilemmas, and more grief than I could bear.

All playing out over a soaring melody and bitter, brutal, yet strangely joyful and glorious lyric which at once echoed, commented upon, and stood apart from the picture show.

Man. Anybody who thinks this show is just cheap, silly, bubblegum filler has no idea what art is.

The other six verses:

Your faith was strong, but you needed proof
You saw her bathing on the roof
Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew you
She tied you to a kitchen chair
She broke your throne and she cut your hair
And from your lips she drew the Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah

You say I took the Name in vain
I don't even know the Name
But if I did, well really, what's it to you?
There's a blaze of light
In every word
It doesn't matter which you heard
The holy or the broken Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah

Baby I've been here before
I know this room, I've walked this floor
I used to live alone before I knew you
I've seen your flag on the marble arch
But love is not some victory march
It's a cold and broken Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah

There was a time when you let me know
What's really going on below
But now you never show it to me, do you?
But I remember when I moved in you
And the holy dove was moving too
And every breath we drew was Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah

Now maybe there's a God above
But all I ever learned from love
Is how to shoot at someone who outdrew you
It's not a complaint that you hear tonight
It's not someone who's seen the light
It's a cold and lonely Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah

I did my best, it wasn't much
I couldn't feel, so I learned to touch
I've told the truth, I didn't come here to fool you
And even though it went all wrong
I'll stand before the Lord of Song
With nothing on my tongue but Halleluljah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah

I hope it comes across on the page. You've got to really sing out those hallelujahs, like you were in church, like you did when you were six years old, when you still believed with a purity and intensity that the world hadn't clouded, and with an innocence beyond the words, when your heart pounded in your chest at the mere intensity of the musical emotion. (Your early childhood may vary, but perhaps you've met a little boy like me. Surely.)

Just makes me want to sit down here and create something beautiful. Hard to compete with, but inspires me to try.

Especially since, of all the things that song is about, not the biggest thing, but definitely on the list, it's a song about writing. About creation, for sure, exaltation at the joy of Creation, and the humble attempt to echo it vocally. That's what any hallelujah is, right? And this one in particular can't you feel it bubbling up inside him as he writes it? Hallelujah.

He opens with the musical creation idea with the secret chord, but naturally it's the part about birthing the text that speaks to me. There's a blaze of light in every word? Yeah. Only a writer would say that. Or put another way, how could anyone feel that and not write?

Hmmmmm. What a stupid thing to say. Because they can't, I guess. How many thousands of times have I thought that about music? And not an ounce of talent to produce it. So I guess only a writer or reader would say that.

And then there are the last lines from the fifth and seventh verses:

And every breath we drew was Hallelujah.

Obviously that's primarily about the intensity of the love affair. (And God, what a way to express it!) But somehow, as a writer, and maybe I'm just projecting here--so what if I'm projecting, isn't that's what art is for, to draw from and project back upon?--I can't help but hear him exuding an equal joy at his ability to express it. A second little hallelujah for capturing the first one so profoundly.

And the last line. With nothing on my tongue but Halleluljah. That whole last verse. Man. Standing before God to be judged, and the god specifically of his particular art, asking for final judgement on the work he has just created. And nothing on his lips but exaltation at the idea. Or is it nothing on his lips but the name of his own song?

Ahhhhhhh. Exaltation at your own work. Someday I'll be that proud of what I've done.

---

And if you find bits of it as baffling as I do, great discussion of it here. (Also the place I cribbed the lyrics. Thanks.) Just a bunch of people trying to make sense of it all. Doing a pretty good job of it. At least one person is. The opening entry kind of made me gape, not in a good way, but hey, he was trying, and he got the discussion going. Luckily I chanced into page 5 of the discussion, and a person named Shamanka really helped me unravell some of it, here.

And quotes from Leonard about it over the years here. One slightly surprising one which really made me smile:

"It's a rather joyous song . I like very much the last verse. I remember singin' it to Bob Dylan after his last concert in Paris. The morning after, I was having coffee with him and we traded lyrics . Dylan * especially liked this last verse "And even though it all went wrong , I stand before the Lord of song With nothing on my lips but Hallelujah"

Leonard COHEN (interview,Paroles et Musiques,1985)