Elastic interactive

I had one of those connective moments this morning, when two disparate ideas coalesce. I'll try to elaborate on it and see if there's anything there. It was really just a flash, and I haven't worked through all the implications. I read a study some few years ago in which these researchers took fMRI's (brainscans) of people who considered themselves Republicans or Democrats while they were reading quotes from the opposing sides major candidate. I believe this was '00, so it would've been Bush and Gore. The scans showed that there was major activation in the limbic system, which is the emotional center of the brain. The basic conclusion was that we respond emotionally to the opposing side before even rationally deconstructing what they've said.
I know I have this experience when I read Jeff Jacoby, the token conservative on the Boston Globe's editorial page. When I see he's written something, I have this moment of slight venomous emotion before I've read the piece. I've emotionally started to salivate at the thought of his bullshit. Sometimes he does make good points, other times I'm all ready to write a letter to the editor myself. Of course, that never actually happens, but you get the idea.
That's not the point. A few months back I read this piece somewhere on the internet about music criticism or somesuch, and this guy was writing about how our personality shapes how we approach music. It's like what we identify with as our thing and what we identify as the other is the starting point for how we appreciate music.
It kind of hit me this morning that this is the same type of phenomenon, so that because we've identified some band as hip or as a sell-out or whatever is going to emotionally influence how we rationally break down the aesthetics of the sound. Obviously, postmodernism has long brought into question what rational really means, and neuroscience is showing us that the postmodern idea is really true. There exists no purely rational thought, and the emotional signals won't even necessarily show up in our consciousness as feelings or anything. They might just be electrical signals in the brain that warp the thinking process and keep us from truly apreciating a band or music or a film or whatever.
Now also there are limits to this. It's not that Bush and Gore are objectively both right, and the opposing sides just don't see what's the what. True also in the realms of art, but it's just good to realize that there is more going on underneath the thoughts of 'this shit sucks' or whatever than just a pure opinion. I guess that was all kind of obvious. Identity shapes our likes and dislikes, but the idea that it might also be behind denying or over enthusing I think is relevant. I was trying to get farther into that, but I'm just not feeling it.

The catch up, catch all post, or I think the feeling is returning to my head

Sometimes sleepwalking is good. I don't say that lightly, as it seems to be a common afliction of the modern world. That said, the past month was one I just had to get through. I don't want to get into all that involved. Let's just say that it's done. I'm on the other side looking back across, and it's time to get back to work, writing, and resume all requisite mental processes.
First and foremost in my thinking and excitement had been Haruki Murakami. I read his novel Hardboiled Wonderland and the End of the World a while back, and was just absolutely bowled over. It was brilliance incarnate. I cannot be effusive enough with my praise for the bizarreness and originality of that piece of work, so when I got my casheesh from the gov't I splurged on a whole slew of his books. I even spent sixty bucks for used copies of his first two novels, which weren't published internationally but were published in English for in-house Japanese consumption. I had to scour the internet to find copies for less than four hundred dollars a pop. I'm can not wait to get these, as they aren't in my hot little hands just yet. I have read his third novel, The wild Sheep Chase, and it's sequel Dance, Dance, Dance in the past week, and they are absolutely absurd. His books are so disjointed and angular, his perspective such a hardboiled right angle, his phraseology so killingly odd (who thinks to compare an airplane to a beetle?). He's reminded me that grammar laws were meant to be broken if the effect is legit. He inhabits this strange world that lies just between naturalism and non-naturalism. There's so much in his work that is brutally and emotionally very real, and yet there's just all kinds of wierd things happening. It's just the greatest. I will read everything he's ever written by the end of the summer.

Oh, where did you go, Wong?

It was my sound and serious intention to take a hiatus from blogging for at least 30 days for several reasons. Maybe I'll elaborate on them over at access the process, since that feels like the better forum, but in my nostalgic rereading of my own earlier posts here, I realized that I'd talked in depth about my love for Wong Kar-Wai and yet had not mentioned his most recent film, My Blueberry Nights. For one thing, it's always unpleasant to watch one of yr idols stumble and get jumbled up. Who wants to reflect on that? Still there were some redeemingly interesting features to Blueberry, so I'll try to focus on them.
It seems there comes a time in all great filmmaker's careers when they've taken their current style to the limit, and need to break free. For examples see the Coen's Ladykillers, Wes Anderson's The Life Aquatic of Steve Zissou, maybe Tarantino's Kill Bill stuff, whatever. This generalization has it's limits, but there does always feel like there's a film that hits the wall. Blueberry might have been that film, but there are too many other factors (first english language film, Lawrence Block as a writing partner, an actual pre-established script) to really say that Wong hit his wall and now has to film a new direction.
The main critiques out there of the film are that Norah Jones was tepid and Jude Law is way too handsome to've pined so long over some girl he knew for a few days. I think that's bull. To me the problem was the connection/poetic collision wasn't established well at all in those early scenes between the two of them. The writing seemed lacking, and for this I blame Block just because I refuse to believe that Kar-Wai is in any way fallible. Those early scenes felt like they were much too hum-drum for any kind of long term pining to've been set into effect like that first scene from Days of Being Wild sets up. There's no poetic beauty, just chit-chat, and this really does sink the film as a whole.
That doesn't mean there wasn't some seriously good shiite as well. David Strathairn and Rachel Wiesz: see this movie just for the thirty or so minutes that they inhabit the film. It's intense and powerful and gives the glint of what this movie could have been, and Chan Marshall's momentary passing was just fab. Natalie Portman is also fun and wild, but for a card player like myself that stuff does not play. It just annoyed me and took me out of the proceedings. Again, here I blame Block for trying to inject a commercially exploitable element into Wong's usual dense atmospherics. It was too theatrical.
So, having said all that the use of musical jump-cuts is, as far as I know, totally revolutionary and never before tried. It doesn't quite work for this film, but I think that's more a result of the aforementioned problems than the idea itself. It could be used to sound (no pun intended) and powerful effect, but...it's certainly not clear to me just how. I do hope Wong will try again will try to bring that particular technique to bear in future films, as it's an alluring idea for a new way to use music in film.
I won't say much and certainly nothing specific about the ending, except to say that it felt tacked on and so not in the Kar-Wai vein, mostly because of my first comments moreso than I'm just by nature maudlin. I hope that was elliptical enough not to give anything away.

Neil Diamond blows the save

Imagine, if you will, this scenario. It's the bottom of sixth inning and somehow the home team has cobbled together a close game with a pitcher on three days rest. Sickness and injury has ravaged the line up, and several triple A call-ups are in the game. The top of the order is coming around, and its time to get the crowd back into the game. Who do you turn to? If this is Red Sox nation, there's no question. It has to be...Neil frickin' Diamond (Warning: baseball rant now in progress).
So what happens? Pedroia pops out. Papi takes a walk, and then arguably the hottest hitter in baseball, the league leader as of that moment in RBI's and homers, stands in. How do we hype him up? Black Betty by Ram Jam. That is just sad, and what is the result? Manny hits into an innning ending double play, and the bats go silent. Timlin gives up another solo homer in the ninth. The Sox hot streak comes to an end, and as I write they've now lost four straight. Great work DJ.
On the serious tip, music is arguably one of the most important tools at the disposal of the home team. It gets the crowd into the game. It can get the players hyped, but here's the thing. Those guys play 162 games a year. Do you really think Manny Ramirez gets ramped up on the 8,236th hearing of Black Betty? I kind of doubt it. If anything, he should stand in to Mind Terrorist by Public Enemy. Admittedly, this isn't really a song. It's just weird scratches and noises with Flavor Flav shouting 'base for your face' for a minute, but I still think it's perfect. How about Kanye's Good Morning? That song's got some umph to it. It really gives you a lift, or if it's got to be classic rock, how about Immigrant Song?
I'm just spitballing here, and probably I've put way too much thought into this. It just frustrated me. I'm sitting there while the whole stadium dances and sings along to 'Sweet Caroline', and I was just embarassed and a little upset. Nobody even noticed Pedrioa pop out. They were just waiting for the song to come back with the chorus so they could sing along, 'So good, so good, so good'. I'm all for dancing and singing like idiots, but we all come to Fenway for a reason. What was it now? Oh right, baseball.
Last word on the subject: The music should complement and bolster the players, mess with the opposing pitcher, and rally the team, not pander to the drunken mob. Let's work on this people.

Comforting?

I'm gonna expand on a comment I made over at the lovely and talented Golfwidow's blog because I don't think I really got to what I was trying to say in the short space of a comment mostly because I was fumbling around with the point and had to think about it for awhile before it became clear to me where I was going with what I said. She asked if her readers considered curry a comfort food.
To me there's a difference between food I crave and food that give me comfort. I crave lots of food. I crave smoked salmon every time I go to the grocery store, and I crave Inari all the time. I want ice cream every time I go to my parents house, and sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night craving fried okra. I get a lot of cravings, but there indulgence rarely comforts me. Sometimes I feel worse. Sometimes I just feel full, but for me comfort is a much more elusive proposition.
Today, for example, I lost a good chunk of money playing cards, and as a result I was craving a cigarette something fierce. I was comforted by the fact that I didn't have one. It's rarely such a direct one to one exchange, but I think that kind of illustrates the point I'm trying to make rather aptly.
The comforting aspect of food, for me, is heavily situational depending as much on circumstances and mood as on the content of the food to be consumed. I'm comforted when I cook a nice meal for friends or family, and we communally enjoy that food. I'm comforted when I eat things that I know I should over and against the ones I crave that I know I shouldn't have or have too much of. I'm comforted by a large heaping bowl of pasta on a rainy night with candles and Thelonious Monk and maybe a nice glass of Chianti. The world feels right in those times, and for a brief moment I'll be comforted.