John Williams got me on a tangent. I’m deliberately working through the history of film music backwards. The reason for doing this in reverse order is that film music, perhaps more than any other type of music, has to work in familiar tropes. A composer who controls his own work can innovate everything he wishes from form to harmony to rhythm to color. But the art of the film composer is beholden to everything that’s already within the film. Film music is supposed to call associations to our mind that help explain plot, or characters, or ideas within the movie. As such, we already need the music which the score recalls within our head. If the Imperial March from Star Wars sounds particularly threatening to us, it’s in part because its sound was lodged within our heads from a hundred years before. Whether or not we realize it, those blaring six-three chords with insistent martial rhythms and menacing brass dissonances recall Hagen’s summoning of the Gibichungs from Wagner’s Gotterdammerung. 99% of the people who see Star Wars have never heard of Gotterdammerung. But by 1977, the nature of what that music means, first heard in 1876, is so lodged within our minds that when we hear that blaring dissonant brass and insistent rhythm, and we immediately think of something both martial and particularly evil (no army actually marches to dissonant music). You would think that the meaning is absolutely primal, but it isn't. We had to get that association from somewhere, and we probably get it from Wagner.
(give it 40 seconds)
As an older generation gave way to a new one, so did their music. Whereas Jazz was still something new and shocking in the 1930’s, it was perfectly familiar music to the 1950’s and 60’s. Jazz was the music with which our grandparents came of age, and each jazz standard had a lifetime’s worth of memories which could be recalled by hearing one particular song. As with all eras since the invention of film music, no artist is in a better position to exploit those memories than the film composer. In the next two entries, I will talk about the different composers of this era and how they responded to the challenge of finding that new/’old’ music for a new but now old generation.
The indispensible Pierro Scaruffi points to Leonard Rosemann’s score for Vicente Minelli’s The Cobwebb (1955) as the inauguarating the new Age of film scoring. Having neither seen nor heard the movie, I’m in no position to judge. But it's difficult to ignore the fact that something in the music began changing around 1955. Whereas Golden Age film composers like Korngold and Waxmann gathered inspiration from elephantine turn of the century scores by Mahler and Strauss, the Silver Age gathered inspiration from the musical developments of roughly 20 years later. When writing in a classical style, it was as likely to be derived from the pared-down, dissonant innovations of Schoenberg and Webern as not. But the scores were as likely to be drawn from the developments of jazz and Tin Pan Alley as from classical sources. Whereas the orchestra once contained the entire world of expression within it, the world now expressed itself with new instruments, new forms, and new genres. Film music had to move on accordingly.
(Huge orchestra or not, there is nothing as American as the theme to The Magnificent Seven)
To distinguish one from the other, Elmer Bernstein was often called Bernstein West while Leonard Bernstein was called Bernstein East. They were roughly the same age, looked alike, came from similar backgrounds, had similar brushes with radical politics, had a similar reluctance to devote themselves to concert composition, and had a similar universal talent for anything to which they applied themselves. Before he became a composer, Elmer Bernstein was a child actor and dancer who played Caliban in a Broadway production of The Tempest. Of his era’s great film composers, Bernstein was probably the most traditional. Bernstein loved huge orchestras as much as any golden age film composer. But whereas Korngold’s diatonic lushness puts us as much in mind of 1900’s Vienna as 1930’s LA, Bernstein’s open chords and syncopation's give his music a completely American feeling missing in Korngold. The instrumentation might not have been American, but rhythms, the harmonies and melodies, the general exuberance of his music absolutely was. Perhaps his music bears the same relationship to Korngold which Aaron Copland’s concert music bore to Gustav Mahler’s. As his career progressed, his appetite for largeness became such an anachronism that it worked best in comedies, where his larger-than-life music could be cued up to screen histrionics.
(You know...)
Whenever a film composer uses a combination of big band and cool jazz to suggest something louche and decadent, he channels Henry Mancini. Mancini is most famous for three things: 1. The Pink Panther Theme, 2. The melody to Moon River, 3. The Theme to Peter Gunn, a TV show that nobody’s heard of anymore, yet nearly everybody knows its guitar and saxaphone riff. While he was fully trained in classical music (he studied with Ernst Krenek), Mancini was truly the musician who brought jazz to Hollywood. Mancini was also one of the only film composers to be as successful outside of film as he was within it. In addition to his movie work, Mancini was a composer and arranger of pop music who had eight gold records. For many years, he was synonymous with a kind of easy listening music that is supposed to be tasteful but defines kitsch - a shame, because at his best Mancini brought a gritty edge to Hollywood music that gave films a newer sound than any other composer of his time.
(Chinatown)
My favorite among this generation of Hollywood composers was Jerry Goldsmith, whose scores I can listen to independently with pleasure. Goldsmith brought a very different jazz sensibility to film music. Mancini’s jazz sound was brashly, almost shockingly, new to the film world, whereas Goldsmith’s sensibility was subtly integrated into a much wider panoply of sound. Whereas Mancini branched out from film music, Goldsmith never seemed to want anything more than film - starting his career in the CBS mailroom and working his way to the top of his profession. When required, Goldsmith could out-Korngold Korngold. His music can have lushness to equal anything in a Golden era score, but with far more variety than any of theirs’. Goldsmith could turn out an incredible horror score like those for Planet of the Apes or Alien that channels the most Boulezian avant-garde, yet write scores that are pure Korngold for Star Trek films in their gigantic sweep and almost cartoonish depictions of exotic characters. But then, there is Chinatown. Goldsmith’s Chinatown score balances the line between so many elements so deftly that it has to be regarded as a true original in American composition. Unlike so much film music, which is supposed to derivative so that it calls associations to our mind that help explain the plot, the music in Chinatown is an equal, almost superior character to any within the script. Perhaps there is no Hollywood movie, not even from Hitchcock, in which a composer is so required to speak with his own voice. The score from Chinatown is one of the greatest pieces of music ever written in America.
Saturday, February 11, 2012
Friday, February 10, 2012
Friday Playlist #2
John Williams: Cowboys Overture
This music means a lot more to good high school band players than it ever would to the jobbing musicians John Williams conducts. And the quality of the performanc just might surprise you.
Bill Monroe and Vassar Clements: Blue Moon of Kentucky
Elmer Bernstein - Magnificent Seven Opening
Earl Scruggs: Foggy Mountain Breakdown
click here to hear FMB played by 59 banjos
Ennio Morricone: For a Few Dollars More Theme
Old and In The Way: Midnight Moonlight
Advanced Playlist:
Mozart: Don Giovanni - Prague National Opera dir. by Sir Charles Mackerras
This music means a lot more to good high school band players than it ever would to the jobbing musicians John Williams conducts. And the quality of the performanc just might surprise you.
Bill Monroe and Vassar Clements: Blue Moon of Kentucky
Elmer Bernstein - Magnificent Seven Opening
Earl Scruggs: Foggy Mountain Breakdown
click here to hear FMB played by 59 banjos
Ennio Morricone: For a Few Dollars More Theme
Old and In The Way: Midnight Moonlight
Advanced Playlist:
Mozart: Don Giovanni - Prague National Opera dir. by Sir Charles Mackerras
Thursday, February 9, 2012
800 Words: A Brief History of Film Music - The Bronze Age
Yesterday, I boldly pronounced that John Williams might be remembered as the last of the great film composers. Even as I wrote that, I knew it couldn’t possibly be true. There are plenty of great film composers working today, even if, to my thinking, most of them don’t quite compare to the best of generations past - not yet at least. To a large extent, it’s not their fault. It’s not the standard of Hollywood music that declined, it’s the standards of Hollywood generally. In the age of the studio system, there were simply more movies to practice the craft upon, and it was almost a given that film music was another important part of a movie that should enhance a product for which quality of writing, editing and cinematography must all meet a standard. In an age when nearly every Hollywood release is focus tested to pander to a particular demographic, it becomes harder to write good movie music. It’s not impossible to write good music for dull movies, but it’s a lot easier if the movie is good. The more imaginative the film, the more possibility for imaginative music to accompany it.
(Batman Theme. Yes, the theme is pure Hindemith. But it's what he does with it.)
But it would probably shed some light on this issue if we talked about a few of the most famous among today’s Hollywood composers. Let’s start with the most obvious. Excerpting John Williams, if most movie buffs were asked to name the most distinctive among living Hollywood composers, they would unhesitatingly choose Tim Burton’s preferred composer, Danny Elfman. Elfman writes fantastically eerie music in a broad array of style that is often better than the movies he’s hired to set - nobody thinks much of the Burton Batman movies, but everybody remember’s Elfman’s scores. There is no doubt, Elfman sets movies with an imagination that is on the Bernard Hermann level. But unfortunately, there has to be a question mark next to his music - is it entirely his? Elfman is fundamentally self-taught, and has always needed reams of help in orchestration. Hollywood orchestrators are not uncommon, many of the best composers like Jerry Goldsmith and Miklos Rozsa partnered with trusted orchestrators. But a story I've heard about Elfman's lack of awareness of the capabilities of some instruments - at least during his early career - is kind of shocking. How many of his effects he thinks of are his own, and how many of them are his orchestrator's? Furthermore, what Elfman generally does is little different than most Broadway composers who farm their orchestrations out to a professional orchestrator. Elfman probably has far more input on his scores than any Broadway composer, but Broadway composers don’t live and die by their ear for instrumental sound, whereas an knowledge of instrumental timbre and color is arguably the most fundamental part of a film composer’s arsenal.
(Whose music?)
A still bigger question mark needs to be put next to James Horner. Horner can write music of stupefying gorgeousness. His score for Field of Dreams is one of the greatest film scores ever written, period. But while every successful film composer eventually has to deal with charges of plagiarism, in Horner’s case, it’s largely deserved. Time and again, Horner writes scores that seem to change around a bare minimum of notes from the original music of great composers.
Many of the best film composers can’t even be called film composers. Michael Giacchino writes as much for video games and television as he does for movies, and his most lauded work was done for Lost (imagine how lame many of that show’s scares would be without the music).
(Glass in The Truman Show)
A different kind of great film composition comes from composers like Philip Glass and Michael Nyman. Both composers are commonly called ‘minimalists,’ meaning that they take small motifs - half a dozen notes at most - and repeat/develop them incessantly. The unvarying sameness of minimalist music works extraordinarily well in movies with great formal cohesion. Philip Glass’s score for The Hours made it into a great movie, each third of the triptych gained enormous cumulative impact by the similarity of music between scenes. But in movies whose structure sprawls, their lack of variation would be stifling. Bernard Hermann could have scored The Truman Show, Philip Glass could not have scored Citizen Kane.
But Glass and Nyman are not the way forward for film music. Both are primarily concert composers, and as such are already part of a dying breed. Orchestral music was once the unquestioned standard manner in which movies were scored, it is currently one of many. Many new releases have soundtracks to existing music, and many original scores are done mostly by computer. To question if electronic music is an inherently inferior method to classical scoring is completely ridiculous. There are already dozens of great original electronic scores like Peter Gabriel’s score for Last Temptation of Christ, or Trent Reznor’s for The Social Network.
(Peter Gabriel’s Crucifixion)
Nevertheless, there is good reason to view the gradual disappearance of classical scores as a tragedy. Every orchestral/choral score secures steady jobs for hundreds of musicians who would otherwise be employed inconsistently during their peak earning years. A rock/electronic score needs far fewer musicians and occasionally only a composer and a computer. Such is evolution at work, but evolution can be a cruel process.
(Gladiator. Um Khulthum, Wagner, Vangelis, and Bjork, simultaneously.)
There’s no doubt, electronics are here to stay. Perhaps the best of today’s film composers are the ones who’ve made their peace with electronics and find ways to integrate them into traditional scoring.Of those who negotiate that middle ground, most would probably agree that the best is Hans Zimmer. The versatility of Zimmer’s scores is staggering, combining the most far-flung musical styles into a cohesive whole. Let’s take the perhaps most obvious example, Gladiator. I think Gladiator is a terrible movie - a travesty of history, clumsy action sequences, and bad writing. But if people remember this movie as better than it is, it’s probably because of Zimmer’s score, which seems to combine the whole world of music into a single movie.
(though it’s kind of ridiculous that Mr. Holland would work his entire career on a three minute symphony....)
If the film industry has a future to employ lots of musicians, it is through the hybrid experiments of composers like Zimmer and Michael Kamen which integrate popular genres and classical music into each other’s frameworks. Even if Kamen’s “American Symphony” from Mr. Holland’s Opus isn’t a particularly good piece of music, it’s difficult not to hear the innovation within it as a challenge. Here, finally, is a piece of American music that genuinely tries to integrate all the developments of a hundred years of popular music into the classical tradition. Was there ever a symphony for the concert hall meant to recall both Aaron Copland and Chuck Berry? If classical music ever goes in that direction, our children might hear Mr. Holland’s Opus with ears we don’t have.
(Batman Theme. Yes, the theme is pure Hindemith. But it's what he does with it.)
But it would probably shed some light on this issue if we talked about a few of the most famous among today’s Hollywood composers. Let’s start with the most obvious. Excerpting John Williams, if most movie buffs were asked to name the most distinctive among living Hollywood composers, they would unhesitatingly choose Tim Burton’s preferred composer, Danny Elfman. Elfman writes fantastically eerie music in a broad array of style that is often better than the movies he’s hired to set - nobody thinks much of the Burton Batman movies, but everybody remember’s Elfman’s scores. There is no doubt, Elfman sets movies with an imagination that is on the Bernard Hermann level. But unfortunately, there has to be a question mark next to his music - is it entirely his? Elfman is fundamentally self-taught, and has always needed reams of help in orchestration. Hollywood orchestrators are not uncommon, many of the best composers like Jerry Goldsmith and Miklos Rozsa partnered with trusted orchestrators. But a story I've heard about Elfman's lack of awareness of the capabilities of some instruments - at least during his early career - is kind of shocking. How many of his effects he thinks of are his own, and how many of them are his orchestrator's? Furthermore, what Elfman generally does is little different than most Broadway composers who farm their orchestrations out to a professional orchestrator. Elfman probably has far more input on his scores than any Broadway composer, but Broadway composers don’t live and die by their ear for instrumental sound, whereas an knowledge of instrumental timbre and color is arguably the most fundamental part of a film composer’s arsenal.
(Whose music?)
A still bigger question mark needs to be put next to James Horner. Horner can write music of stupefying gorgeousness. His score for Field of Dreams is one of the greatest film scores ever written, period. But while every successful film composer eventually has to deal with charges of plagiarism, in Horner’s case, it’s largely deserved. Time and again, Horner writes scores that seem to change around a bare minimum of notes from the original music of great composers.
Many of the best film composers can’t even be called film composers. Michael Giacchino writes as much for video games and television as he does for movies, and his most lauded work was done for Lost (imagine how lame many of that show’s scares would be without the music).
(Glass in The Truman Show)
A different kind of great film composition comes from composers like Philip Glass and Michael Nyman. Both composers are commonly called ‘minimalists,’ meaning that they take small motifs - half a dozen notes at most - and repeat/develop them incessantly. The unvarying sameness of minimalist music works extraordinarily well in movies with great formal cohesion. Philip Glass’s score for The Hours made it into a great movie, each third of the triptych gained enormous cumulative impact by the similarity of music between scenes. But in movies whose structure sprawls, their lack of variation would be stifling. Bernard Hermann could have scored The Truman Show, Philip Glass could not have scored Citizen Kane.
But Glass and Nyman are not the way forward for film music. Both are primarily concert composers, and as such are already part of a dying breed. Orchestral music was once the unquestioned standard manner in which movies were scored, it is currently one of many. Many new releases have soundtracks to existing music, and many original scores are done mostly by computer. To question if electronic music is an inherently inferior method to classical scoring is completely ridiculous. There are already dozens of great original electronic scores like Peter Gabriel’s score for Last Temptation of Christ, or Trent Reznor’s for The Social Network.
(Peter Gabriel’s Crucifixion)
Nevertheless, there is good reason to view the gradual disappearance of classical scores as a tragedy. Every orchestral/choral score secures steady jobs for hundreds of musicians who would otherwise be employed inconsistently during their peak earning years. A rock/electronic score needs far fewer musicians and occasionally only a composer and a computer. Such is evolution at work, but evolution can be a cruel process.
(Gladiator. Um Khulthum, Wagner, Vangelis, and Bjork, simultaneously.)
There’s no doubt, electronics are here to stay. Perhaps the best of today’s film composers are the ones who’ve made their peace with electronics and find ways to integrate them into traditional scoring.Of those who negotiate that middle ground, most would probably agree that the best is Hans Zimmer. The versatility of Zimmer’s scores is staggering, combining the most far-flung musical styles into a cohesive whole. Let’s take the perhaps most obvious example, Gladiator. I think Gladiator is a terrible movie - a travesty of history, clumsy action sequences, and bad writing. But if people remember this movie as better than it is, it’s probably because of Zimmer’s score, which seems to combine the whole world of music into a single movie.
(though it’s kind of ridiculous that Mr. Holland would work his entire career on a three minute symphony....)
If the film industry has a future to employ lots of musicians, it is through the hybrid experiments of composers like Zimmer and Michael Kamen which integrate popular genres and classical music into each other’s frameworks. Even if Kamen’s “American Symphony” from Mr. Holland’s Opus isn’t a particularly good piece of music, it’s difficult not to hear the innovation within it as a challenge. Here, finally, is a piece of American music that genuinely tries to integrate all the developments of a hundred years of popular music into the classical tradition. Was there ever a symphony for the concert hall meant to recall both Aaron Copland and Chuck Berry? If classical music ever goes in that direction, our children might hear Mr. Holland’s Opus with ears we don’t have.
Wednesday, February 8, 2012
800 Words: John Williams Bigotry
“They’re butchering the classics! John Williams is rolling over in his grave!”
- Homer Simpson
(the last 15 minutes of ET, some of the greatest film music ever written)
I’m clearly getting older. John Williams turned 80 today, and I remember watching him conduct on TV when he was in his mid-fifties. It seems weird to think of John Williams as the last great film composer, but that just might be his epitaph. Jerry Goldsmith, Elmer Bernstein, and Henry Mancini are all dead. Who else is there? Some people say that Howard Shore is in his league, but few people have much to say about his work before or after Lord of the Rings. Many people love Elliot Goldenthal’s film music, but he often waits years between film scores. Perhaps Ennio Morricone trumps them all, but most of his music is for small European films we’ll never see. In the American film industry, it’s just John Williams at the top. At 80 years old, he still turns out at least 2 feature-length scores every year, and every one of them makes its movie better than it would be without him. He probably has no equal and certainly no superior.
For over a generation, John Williams has been an unfortunate euphemism in the classical music world for selling out...in every sense of the word. Many American orchestras can’t sell out for concerts of Beethoven and Mozart, but if they can guarantee a sold-out house if they program John Williams. Ask your average American to name a living classical composer, they will not know the names John Adams or Steve Reich, and maybe they’ll have once heard the name Phillip Glass, but they won’t remember it. The average American mind will go straight to John Williams, then draw a total blank.
Film music can be a thankless job that gets little respect from other musicians. No composer begins his first compositions with dreams of being a great film composer, no instrumentalist gives up her whole childhood to practice so that she can play John Williams for the rest of her life. But it’s steady employment, a chance to utilize creativity, and a better chance for most musicians to practice their craft than they’d ever get if they reached for genres with more prestige. Within the film industry, there are probably dozens of musicians who could have been Mozarts, Heifetzes, Leonard Bernsteins (to say nothing of John Lennons). But as ever, luck determines who gets to the top rung, and the rest of the arts world has to go to work like all the rest of us. Perhaps some people dream from childhood of nothing but a wonderful career in film music, but I find it hard to believe. Who knows? Most of them are probably happier being steady professionals than they’d have ever been with the impossible demands of the concert circuit.
Is film music somehow inferior to other forms of classical music? Certainly not. But it is different and it can’t be measured by the same metrics. How do you tell a great film composer? Well, it’s difficult and it takes watching a lot of mediocre movies, a subject on which I’m as much an expert as anybody who watches whatever’s on TV. A great film composer doesn’t necessarily score great movies, but he does make the movies the movies he scores greater. Because of a great score, bad films become decent, decent films become good, and good films become great. A great film composer needn’t be a great composer of non-film music, or even an original one. In fact, it’s sometimes better that he’s not. Great film music is an indivisible part of the movie itself, and performing great film music without the film can be as non-sensical as performing an opera without singers. You might be able to take the ‘greatest hits’, but it’s hardly as effective as listening to the music in the context of the movie.
You might be able to recall the themes of the great film scores, even if you haven’t seen the movie. But that’s no different than being able to sing a verse from a song that’s part of an entire album. If you want to appreciate the whole achievement, you have to see the movie. And because you have to see the whole movie, the film composer is a prisoner to whatever director hires him. If most film buffs were asked whom the greatest film composer was, they would probably say Bernard Hermann without skipping a beat. But was Hermann really any better than Erich Korngold, Max Steiner, or Franz Waxmann? Hermann was the preferred composer of Alfred Hitchcock, and did well-known scores for Orson Welles, Francois Truffaut, Brian de Palma, and Martin Scorsese. Except perhaps for John Williams, no film composer got better jobs. Was Hermann employed by such great directors because he was more talented? Did Hermann become a greater film composer because he had better bosses? Or was Hermann just a lucky bastard? These are questions nobody can answer sufficiently, and that’s why you can’t measure Bernard Hermann against Beethoven. They were artists in two completely different artforms.
(Mean Streets)
But there’s another reason that these debates are becoming ever more futile. Film music may die. Not film music as a whole, but film music as we think of it to this day. It’s been a long illness, but ever since Martin Scorsese cued up the Ronettes for the opening of Mean Streets (or Stanley Kubrick cued up Richard Strauss for 2001), the days of new music for major releases have been numbered. Why hire a 100-piece orchestra to do the job of a synthesizer? Why hire a composer when a soundtrack of existing music can do its job? Without John Williams, would there still be a film music industry? Will film music itself outlive him?
- Homer Simpson
(the last 15 minutes of ET, some of the greatest film music ever written)
I’m clearly getting older. John Williams turned 80 today, and I remember watching him conduct on TV when he was in his mid-fifties. It seems weird to think of John Williams as the last great film composer, but that just might be his epitaph. Jerry Goldsmith, Elmer Bernstein, and Henry Mancini are all dead. Who else is there? Some people say that Howard Shore is in his league, but few people have much to say about his work before or after Lord of the Rings. Many people love Elliot Goldenthal’s film music, but he often waits years between film scores. Perhaps Ennio Morricone trumps them all, but most of his music is for small European films we’ll never see. In the American film industry, it’s just John Williams at the top. At 80 years old, he still turns out at least 2 feature-length scores every year, and every one of them makes its movie better than it would be without him. He probably has no equal and certainly no superior.
For over a generation, John Williams has been an unfortunate euphemism in the classical music world for selling out...in every sense of the word. Many American orchestras can’t sell out for concerts of Beethoven and Mozart, but if they can guarantee a sold-out house if they program John Williams. Ask your average American to name a living classical composer, they will not know the names John Adams or Steve Reich, and maybe they’ll have once heard the name Phillip Glass, but they won’t remember it. The average American mind will go straight to John Williams, then draw a total blank.
Film music can be a thankless job that gets little respect from other musicians. No composer begins his first compositions with dreams of being a great film composer, no instrumentalist gives up her whole childhood to practice so that she can play John Williams for the rest of her life. But it’s steady employment, a chance to utilize creativity, and a better chance for most musicians to practice their craft than they’d ever get if they reached for genres with more prestige. Within the film industry, there are probably dozens of musicians who could have been Mozarts, Heifetzes, Leonard Bernsteins (to say nothing of John Lennons). But as ever, luck determines who gets to the top rung, and the rest of the arts world has to go to work like all the rest of us. Perhaps some people dream from childhood of nothing but a wonderful career in film music, but I find it hard to believe. Who knows? Most of them are probably happier being steady professionals than they’d have ever been with the impossible demands of the concert circuit.
Is film music somehow inferior to other forms of classical music? Certainly not. But it is different and it can’t be measured by the same metrics. How do you tell a great film composer? Well, it’s difficult and it takes watching a lot of mediocre movies, a subject on which I’m as much an expert as anybody who watches whatever’s on TV. A great film composer doesn’t necessarily score great movies, but he does make the movies the movies he scores greater. Because of a great score, bad films become decent, decent films become good, and good films become great. A great film composer needn’t be a great composer of non-film music, or even an original one. In fact, it’s sometimes better that he’s not. Great film music is an indivisible part of the movie itself, and performing great film music without the film can be as non-sensical as performing an opera without singers. You might be able to take the ‘greatest hits’, but it’s hardly as effective as listening to the music in the context of the movie.
You might be able to recall the themes of the great film scores, even if you haven’t seen the movie. But that’s no different than being able to sing a verse from a song that’s part of an entire album. If you want to appreciate the whole achievement, you have to see the movie. And because you have to see the whole movie, the film composer is a prisoner to whatever director hires him. If most film buffs were asked whom the greatest film composer was, they would probably say Bernard Hermann without skipping a beat. But was Hermann really any better than Erich Korngold, Max Steiner, or Franz Waxmann? Hermann was the preferred composer of Alfred Hitchcock, and did well-known scores for Orson Welles, Francois Truffaut, Brian de Palma, and Martin Scorsese. Except perhaps for John Williams, no film composer got better jobs. Was Hermann employed by such great directors because he was more talented? Did Hermann become a greater film composer because he had better bosses? Or was Hermann just a lucky bastard? These are questions nobody can answer sufficiently, and that’s why you can’t measure Bernard Hermann against Beethoven. They were artists in two completely different artforms.
(Mean Streets)
But there’s another reason that these debates are becoming ever more futile. Film music may die. Not film music as a whole, but film music as we think of it to this day. It’s been a long illness, but ever since Martin Scorsese cued up the Ronettes for the opening of Mean Streets (or Stanley Kubrick cued up Richard Strauss for 2001), the days of new music for major releases have been numbered. Why hire a 100-piece orchestra to do the job of a synthesizer? Why hire a composer when a soundtrack of existing music can do its job? Without John Williams, would there still be a film music industry? Will film music itself outlive him?
Tuesday, February 7, 2012
800 Words: Manning Up America with Clint
I know it’s just a commercial. I know it’s heavy handed. I know it’s in the service of a not-quite democratic message. But I got chills on Sunday night when Clint Eastwood told America that it’s halftime, and our second half’s about to begin. Clint is the only American who could use a football metaphor on a national television commercial to take an eagle-eye view of half-a-millennium’s history and make it sound like precisely the right mix of scholarly consideration and bar room philosophizing. After it was done, I realized that Clint just got away with telling America the one thing they don’t want to hear during the Super Bowl - that the country we know will not be around forever, it might even die. To point this metaphor in a different direction, it would seem that Clint is telling us that America is a spoiled, soft, middle aged man, in the grips of a narcissistic mid-life crisis, who needs to harden up to the responsibilities of seeing his children pass adolescence without a heroin addiction or a pregnancy scare - regardless of what it takes. After the ad was done, I felt an uncontrollable urge to invade Syria.
America declines everywhere else, but the cult of Clint thrives more than ever. He’s not just the standard by which every American male viewed himself for half a century, he’s transformed himself in old age into that extremely unmasculine thing, a great artist. Supposedly greater actors and directors have done their great things and long since burned out. But has any figure in American movies created as many great films over the last twenty years as Clint?
Time and again, we learn that we condescend to Clint at our own peril, yet everybody does it. Sure enough, come Monday morning, there was Karl Rove on CBS, accusing Clint of shilling for President Obama. Let’s pause for a second to think of how far discourse in this country has veered from reality that Clint @#$%^&* Eastwood can be denounced as a liberal stooge.
In his personal life, he’s probably every bit the right-wing reactionary his on-screen persona makes him seem. He was once heard to complain that he’d never win an Oscar because he’s not Jewish. And how many racist, sexist, and homophobic epithets can he include in his movies before we start thinking he means them? But it’s Clint’s immunity to the Hollywood echo-chamber which toughened him up. In a town where left-wing sentiment is as cheap as a date with an aspiring actress, there are hundreds of stars who hold precisely the opposite views from Clint. Most of them are heralded as great talents, but they’ve long since disappointed and disappeared. Clint’s old-fashioned views of politics, of moviemaking (cheaply and quickly), of acting itself (don’t), made his career so different from every standard for how great movies were made that he practically became his own studio - proving that great movies can still be made in the old-fashioned way of a town that long since abandoned the model which made them successful. He is more than royalty, he is a national symbol - the final relic of Golden Age Hollywood.
It’s amazing to go back to those early movies and realize how stupid they are. Clint’s most famous action movies, appearing as they during the heyday of ‘New Hollywood,’ seemed to many like an extended middle finger in the face of liberal platitudes. When Dirty Harry first appeared, Pauline Kael and Roger Ebert both accused the film of advocating a ‘fascist’ point of view. But whether or not that’s true, it would be far easier to feel threatened by the movie’s advocacy of vigilantism if it didn’t suck. However authoritarian Dirty Harry’s message, it is an incredibly silly movie - full of cartoonish characters, primitive action sequences, and stupid catchphrases. Perhaps it is The Passion of the Christ for its day - gathering enormous controversy because people can’t get past the political point of view to see that the movie itself is awful.
But was there ever a case of an artist who evolved further Clint did over the next twenty years? When one compares the violence of Dirty Harry to Unforgiven, you see the difference between a movie which thinks violence is really cool, and a movie in which violence and horror are synonymous. For all its pretenses to right-wing disgust, Dirty Harry doesn’t seem to have a moral point of view past thinking that violence is fun to watch - whether meted out by a serial killer or the vigilante who takes it upon himself to stop him. But in Unforgiven, the act of murder is given its full due. Like The Godfather, Unforgiven is a movie told from the point of view of the murderers. We root for them because we see what shaped them, and we see the weight which murder holds upon their souls. Yes, Clint seems to be saying, violence is necessary, but the fact that it’s necessary is the great tragedy of our existence. It's a very conservative sentiment, but that doesn't make it any less true.
You don’t have to agree with everything Clint is to see the greatness of his work. In his old age, this Nixon-era antique became a Great American Artist and the last best proof that Hollywood might again be what it once was. The message of his movies is generally not one we liberals like to hear. But as always, we ignore what Clint has to say at our peril. If Clint says that America is exactly halfway through its history, it just might be true. If anyone can tell America exactly what it is, it's Clint.
800 Words: Back to 800 Words
It’s been an amazing six or seven months as I’ve written these semi-daily 800 Word posts that invariably tended to be 2-5000 words. The activity was - without a doubt - my highlight of 2011(don’t judge). At my most productive, I must have churned out as much as 15,000 words a week, and that doesn’t count all the pieces I didn’t finish. As I started writing, I realized that there was more to say about more subjects than I ever thought possible, and I followed my thoughts to whatever length it found me going - occasionally churning out a 10-12,000 word essay over the course of a week. And it would seem that a good two to four dozen of you seemed reliably willing to follow me to wherever I found myself going, and there are another four-dozen who would check in when things caught there interest. I’m glad you’ve found enjoyment in what I’ve written.
In one sense, and only one, I’m the victim of my own success. This attempt to create consistent writing was never supposed to be so extensive. My plan was to have 800 words of sharply defined commentary about any subject about which I would think of over the course of the day - an endeavor that should never take more than 90 minutes and can usually be wrapped up in less than an hour. The problem is, as most newspaper columnists should know - that there is no way to cover a subject in 800 words without sticking to base generalizations. Any real analysis of a subject requires tons more critical thought, digestion, background, and statistics than even the most fleet-footed essayist (Malcolm Gladwell? Tom Wolfe?) could give in 800 words. There was simply too much to say. How can you sum up Jon Stewart, Johnny Cash, or Disney in so little space?
For more than a hundred years, the 800 Worder was almost the exclusive province of newspaper columnists. 800 words is just enough space to endow the newspaper with a double purpose. On the one hand, a newspaper columnist functions as a filter through which the reader can interpret all the facts with which the rest of the newspaper inundates him every day. Whether the subject was politics, movies, books, or sports, newspaper columnists were people who taught hundreds of millions in the newly literate middle class how to think critically about the information you process every day. On the other, a newspaper columnist is a personality, selling not only her point of view but also himself. Whereas straight reporting should be anonymous, the newspaper columnist’s persona is a juxtaposition to the bland profusion of facts, figures, and events that make up our daily intake of news.
In the heyday of the columnist, it was something incredibly new and exciting - a combination of educator and entertainer who allowed millions more of people to be better informed and engaged. But in today’s world, the 800 worder is almost obsolete. Think of how many columnists in today’s mainstream publications are writers who encourage us to think deeper? Now think of how many encourage us to simplify our thinking. If your list of #1 outnumbers your #2, I’m envious of you, because you’ve wasted less time than the rest of us reading newspaper columns.
And yet, that’s precisely the appeal of the 800-worder. It’s so simple to write - any child can form a coherent opinion on a simple subject. Imagine that your 3rd grade class were the New York Times op-ed page asked to come in tomorrow with an assignment based on the value of homework: you’d have a Thomas Friedman explaining why homework is essential to help us compete with his pen-pal in Bangalore; you’d have a David Brooks longing for the days of 1st grade when everybody thought homework was fun; you’d have a Paul Krugman who uses it as an excuse mounting weekly assaults on the mendacious inefficiency of the teacher’s homework assignments, and a Maureen Dowd speculating about the teacher’s affair with the after school janitor.
My purpose in calling this series ‘800 words’ was neither to parlay this into a bad newspaper column (where would anybody do that in today’s world?) nor to pay homage to newspaper columns of any sort. It was to create an easily digestible way to force myself to write every day. I hoped to find a rhythm that would enable me to write more rather than less. But once I started these 800 words posts, 800 words became grossly inadequate. I wanted 7 new 800 word posts a week, but I was lucky in even my most productive weeks to put up three or four. The reason was all too simple - I got carried away every time. There’s simply too much to write about. If the subject grew too extensive, I broke up the essay into parts. But I rarely ever finished those multi-part essays, because there was usually another subject that ‘required’ my attention. By month 3 or 4, I found myself obsessed by this venture to the point that it came to the exclusion of most non-work related activities. I used to play music, remember?....
So now that I’m back to playing music, I have to curb the excess verbiage. For now until whenever, these blogposts will now be leaner. If I get past 800 words, I know that it’s time to wrap it up. If I get to 1000 words, I will simply stop. If I really have something so important that it can neither remain unsaid nor be fit into 800 words, I will resume speaking of it in the next day’s post.
Furthermore, tomorrow I will begin the process of retooling, and for a while the blog will resemble a construction site - with lots of links that don’t work. There will be lots of posts taken down (and saved) because I’m not particularly satisfied with them, for whatever reason. Some of those links will reappear over time, some of them probably won’t.
Aaaaand, we’re past 1000 words...
In one sense, and only one, I’m the victim of my own success. This attempt to create consistent writing was never supposed to be so extensive. My plan was to have 800 words of sharply defined commentary about any subject about which I would think of over the course of the day - an endeavor that should never take more than 90 minutes and can usually be wrapped up in less than an hour. The problem is, as most newspaper columnists should know - that there is no way to cover a subject in 800 words without sticking to base generalizations. Any real analysis of a subject requires tons more critical thought, digestion, background, and statistics than even the most fleet-footed essayist (Malcolm Gladwell? Tom Wolfe?) could give in 800 words. There was simply too much to say. How can you sum up Jon Stewart, Johnny Cash, or Disney in so little space?
For more than a hundred years, the 800 Worder was almost the exclusive province of newspaper columnists. 800 words is just enough space to endow the newspaper with a double purpose. On the one hand, a newspaper columnist functions as a filter through which the reader can interpret all the facts with which the rest of the newspaper inundates him every day. Whether the subject was politics, movies, books, or sports, newspaper columnists were people who taught hundreds of millions in the newly literate middle class how to think critically about the information you process every day. On the other, a newspaper columnist is a personality, selling not only her point of view but also himself. Whereas straight reporting should be anonymous, the newspaper columnist’s persona is a juxtaposition to the bland profusion of facts, figures, and events that make up our daily intake of news.
In the heyday of the columnist, it was something incredibly new and exciting - a combination of educator and entertainer who allowed millions more of people to be better informed and engaged. But in today’s world, the 800 worder is almost obsolete. Think of how many columnists in today’s mainstream publications are writers who encourage us to think deeper? Now think of how many encourage us to simplify our thinking. If your list of #1 outnumbers your #2, I’m envious of you, because you’ve wasted less time than the rest of us reading newspaper columns.
And yet, that’s precisely the appeal of the 800-worder. It’s so simple to write - any child can form a coherent opinion on a simple subject. Imagine that your 3rd grade class were the New York Times op-ed page asked to come in tomorrow with an assignment based on the value of homework: you’d have a Thomas Friedman explaining why homework is essential to help us compete with his pen-pal in Bangalore; you’d have a David Brooks longing for the days of 1st grade when everybody thought homework was fun; you’d have a Paul Krugman who uses it as an excuse mounting weekly assaults on the mendacious inefficiency of the teacher’s homework assignments, and a Maureen Dowd speculating about the teacher’s affair with the after school janitor.
My purpose in calling this series ‘800 words’ was neither to parlay this into a bad newspaper column (where would anybody do that in today’s world?) nor to pay homage to newspaper columns of any sort. It was to create an easily digestible way to force myself to write every day. I hoped to find a rhythm that would enable me to write more rather than less. But once I started these 800 words posts, 800 words became grossly inadequate. I wanted 7 new 800 word posts a week, but I was lucky in even my most productive weeks to put up three or four. The reason was all too simple - I got carried away every time. There’s simply too much to write about. If the subject grew too extensive, I broke up the essay into parts. But I rarely ever finished those multi-part essays, because there was usually another subject that ‘required’ my attention. By month 3 or 4, I found myself obsessed by this venture to the point that it came to the exclusion of most non-work related activities. I used to play music, remember?....
So now that I’m back to playing music, I have to curb the excess verbiage. For now until whenever, these blogposts will now be leaner. If I get past 800 words, I know that it’s time to wrap it up. If I get to 1000 words, I will simply stop. If I really have something so important that it can neither remain unsaid nor be fit into 800 words, I will resume speaking of it in the next day’s post.
Furthermore, tomorrow I will begin the process of retooling, and for a while the blog will resemble a construction site - with lots of links that don’t work. There will be lots of posts taken down (and saved) because I’m not particularly satisfied with them, for whatever reason. Some of those links will reappear over time, some of them probably won’t.
Aaaaand, we’re past 1000 words...
Sunday, February 5, 2012
Quote of the Night:
Der Fersko: Did you see that Super Bowl ad where Clint Eastwood shot all those Auto Workers?
Some People by Wislawa Szymborska
Some people fleeing some other people.
In some country under the sun
and some clouds.
They leave behind some of their everything,
sown fields, some chickens, dogs,
mirrors in which fire now sees itself reflected.
On their backs are pitchers and bundles,
the emptier, the heavier from one day to the next.
Taking place stealthily is somebody's stopping,
and in the commotion, somebody's bread somebody's snatching
and a dead child somebody's shaking.
In front of them some still not the right way,
nor the bridge that should be
over a river strangely rosy.
Around them, some gunfire, at times closer, at times farther off,
and, above, a plane circling somewhat.
Some invisibility would come in handy,
some grayish stoniness,
or even better, non-being
for a little or a long while.
Something else is yet to happen, only where and what?
Someone will head toward them, only when and who,
in how many shapes and with what intentions?
Given a choice,
maybe he will choose not to be the enemy and
leave them with some kind of life.
- translated by Joanna Trzeciak
In some country under the sun
and some clouds.
They leave behind some of their everything,
sown fields, some chickens, dogs,
mirrors in which fire now sees itself reflected.
On their backs are pitchers and bundles,
the emptier, the heavier from one day to the next.
Taking place stealthily is somebody's stopping,
and in the commotion, somebody's bread somebody's snatching
and a dead child somebody's shaking.
In front of them some still not the right way,
nor the bridge that should be
over a river strangely rosy.
Around them, some gunfire, at times closer, at times farther off,
and, above, a plane circling somewhat.
Some invisibility would come in handy,
some grayish stoniness,
or even better, non-being
for a little or a long while.
Something else is yet to happen, only where and what?
Someone will head toward them, only when and who,
in how many shapes and with what intentions?
Given a choice,
maybe he will choose not to be the enemy and
leave them with some kind of life.
- translated by Joanna Trzeciak
Friday, February 3, 2012
Friday Playlist #1
A new feature. Every Friday, I'm going to post six links to music that's been on my mind during the week - sometimes thematically related, sometimes not at all.
Gogol Bordello: Forces of Victory
Bartok: String Quartet no. 2 (Second Movement)
Taraf de Haidouks, Kocani Orkestar and Tarik Tuxsiszoglu: A La Turk
Kodaly: Dances of Galanta
Balkan Beatbox: Cha Cha
Ligeti: Concert Romanesc 4th Movement
Gogol Bordello: Forces of Victory
Bartok: String Quartet no. 2 (Second Movement)
Taraf de Haidouks, Kocani Orkestar and Tarik Tuxsiszoglu: A La Turk
Kodaly: Dances of Galanta
Balkan Beatbox: Cha Cha
Ligeti: Concert Romanesc 4th Movement
800 Words: Writer's Block
I get writer’s block, awful writer’s block. I always have. For months, you can write at a steady stream with no interruption and make all sorts of plans for future projects which you see no reason to believe will remain incomplete. But one day the words dry out, you can’t imagine anything on the blank screen and the ability to merely face it becomes onerous. Eventually, you’d much rather watch TV.
And even in those moments when the words do come, there’s a 50/50 shot that you can’t finish it. Sometimes you’ve written four excellent paragraphs only for the fifth to fail you, so you skip paragraph five with the intention of doubling back. Six and seven come easily, but paragraph eight is similarly uncooperative. You begin to lose your concept, paragraphs nine and ten are muddled at best, and by paragraph 11, you’ve lost the entire train of the argument. The words don’t come, and there’s no way to form the concept you have in your head. “Onto the next post!” you say, only for the next post to be still more fraught with difficulty than the last one.
I’m sure that every writer has a different reason for writer’s block. Mine is usually a failure of nerve, not ability. The ability to write like me doesn’t necessarily require talent, but it requires an army of nerve. It requires the ability to have no compunctions about writing whatever personal stuff pops into your head with as little filter as possible, because once the censor gains a foothold, it’s nearly impossible to get him to back down.
Nerve is my most reliable friend. Without him, I’d have been lying for the last twenty years on my parents couch in a fetal position, my thumb in my mouth. It always surprises people when I say that I’m an extremely shy person, but I am, and I’ve been compensating for that ever since I’ve had memories.
In my twenties, I’ve heard over and over that watching me at parties is a bit like watching a cartoon character or performance art - in which I might say or do something so completely outrageous that it can’t help be remembered five years later. Knowing some of the stunts I’ve pulled in social situations, I can’t call this a lie. No one has less shame than I about making a fool of himself, or saying outrageous things about others. It’s my job. Wherever I go, I’m the court jester - and however debasing it is to be a such a clown, the jester is still the second-most powerful person in court, saying out loud with impunity what others never dare.
So whatever I say out loud to embarrass myself, others can’t say before me. But this description is entirely at variance with the person I know myself to be - not because I consider myself particularly deep, only because I consider myself extremely inhibited. I’m far too happy being alone for 48 hours at a time to be anything resembling an extrovert. The person I am in public, hilarious as I might find him (and as others do too - occasionally), is absolutely not me. I’m far too uncomfortable around people to let the real thing out. It makes me a very good performer and a very fine conductor for certain musicians (though an equally awful one for others). Like all introverts, I prefer a gathering of 3 friends to 30. And like all performers, I prefer an audience of 300 to 30. The problem is neither intimacy nor crowds, the problem is a large gathering of individuals. The small crowd is my mortal enemy. The worst part of any day is the moment after I’ve said something awful and am waiting for a reaction - it might be laughter, it might be a grimace, it might be a slap. How much more compounded is that reaction when you have to earn the laughter of 11 friends rather than 1? And because I so dread the small crowd, I’ve become uncommonly good at entertaining it.
Nowhere is this more the case lately than with my 30th birthday party. Thirty is not the worst of the arbitrary birthday milestones, but it is the first of the bad ones. Once you’ve hit thirty, you’re unmistakably ‘over-the-hill.’ From thirty until whenever it is, you are officially past the extent of your physical, mental, and emotional capacities. If some people, more worthwhile people, peak past thirty, it’s because they learn how to better manage whatever resources they have left. But what is worst about turning thirty is the knowledge that, for the first time in your life, you’re working with less potential than you ever had before. From thirty onward, the limitations just keep growing. So it’s safe to say that I’m dreading this birthday, and all the moreso given the new situation in which my life finds itself.
About two months ago, as the move to my new apartment reached a fever pitch of complications, landlord arguments, and DIY furniture disasters, a thought occurred to me that saddened me terribly. It’s only when all this moving is finally done that the real work begins. I may have grown up in Baltimore, but I’ve long since turned Washingtonian - for a decade, virtually all my friends have either lived or moved away from DC, all the hangouts I knew were in DC, and DC is still the only city around which I can drive without being guaranteed to get lost. Without having ever held a paid political position, I’d become fixated on following politics as only a longtime Washingtonian can be. I moved to Baltimore permanently to take a job in the ‘family business’, but aside from this business, I have no business in Baltimore. It’s a city I neither understood nor appreciated as a kid and swore that I would leave the moment I got an opportunity and never return. Now that the two-month nightmare of moving is over, I’m now living the second nightmare of making peace with the city I so hated as a teenager.
So I therefore thought to myself about how best I could ease myself into this ‘city transfer’ in which a mere 40 miles makes the difference between home and a strange land. I have no reason to think that my DC friends will ever visit me in Baltimore except to trust that they will visit this underrated city (and friend?) out of the goodness of their hearts - you will...won’t you??? Certainly, I will get to know plenty of Baltimoreans before long, but the road to social business currently requires two hours of driving. Perhaps I could have an event - not immediately, but soon - in which I can introduce my newfound cohorts in Baltimore to my eight divisions of DC cohorts so that I might create one giant DC-Baltimore legion. But I have no wedding and certainly no Christening with which I might summon friends soon from near and far. All I have is that dreaded, awful thirtieth birthday which I would prefer to call a regular day in the life of a twenty-six year old.
And so I decided to put on a thirtieth birthday party. I come down to DC all the time, it’s high time people came to Baltimore for me - and come they are. People look to be coming not only from DC but from Maine, Boston, New Jersey, New York, Illinois, Phoenix, and San Francisco also. But such an event is no easy task to put together. Merely putting the date together has already been the cause of multiple awkward emails. Now, let’s be clear, these emails were in no way awkward - ok...that’s not entirely true... Most of these emails were in no way awkward. They were merely awkward in my head and shall remain so until the moment this party is over.
Just to give one example: there is a friend of mine, not a close one, but one whom I’ve long thought I could be better friends with, but for whatever reason we’ve always remained on opposite sides of the social circle. Perhaps this person doesn’t particularly like me, and frankly I’m long past the point of caring. But this person’s been dating a girl for a number of years, and when they first got together I made a point of being very nice to the girlfriend. In the three odd years since they became an item, they’ve become the inseparable couple “____ and _____”, one very nearly as much a part of the social circle as the other. And so after I sent out the email, I got an email back from the ‘girlfriend’, who says “As always, thanks for the heads up:).”
A perfectly legitimate, polite response. But the neurotic in me reads the “As always” and thinks “.....Oh dear...” To a normal person, this no doubt means ‘you’ve always been considerate.’ But this is me about whom she’s talking about, and I’m generally of the opinion that I’m quite obnoxious, so how could she possible think better of me? My instinct tells me that there is a 70% chance that this means ‘Shut the f&^% up already!!’
So after five seconds of thought, I respond with what I think is precisely the right balance of self-deprecation and sincerity. “As always, clogging your inbox is the least I can do:).” If I sent too many emails about the party, as I no doubt have, this is the perfect way to shrug it off/apologize. So I send it off, and I think nothing of it for fifteen minutes.
…”as always, clogging your inbox is the least I can do :)”....
‘Clogging your inbox....oh god....that’s a double entendre. Does that sound like I might be making a pass at her? Oh god, it kind of does. And if that sounds like I’m making a pass, it’s the single worst pass in the history of emails. Oh god, I honestly don’t know which bothers me more: the fact that it sounds like I’m hitting on her, or the fact that it would be the clumsiest pass ever...Well she is attractive, maybe you subconsciously inserted a Freudian slip. Isn’t ‘insert’ a Freudian slip? Oh my god, SHUT UP EVAN!’
And knowing myself as I do, I guarantee you that I will anxiously pursue this line of thought once a day nearly every day until this party. It’s bad enough to live in dread of being an inconsiderate douche who would hurt one’s friends. It’s bad enough to live in dread of being a total social idiot. But to be both simultaneously is a dread I don’t wish on my worst enemy. Furthermore, I guarantee that the one thing to make me keep worrying in precisely this loop is to write about it and post it. Which I shall soon do. As always, self-deprecating comedy is much more important than the stability of friendships.
And therein lies the problem. I have become far too self-revealing in what I’ve written on this blog. It’s become like a substance addiction whose presence or absence defines my life. I used to be the person who laughed at people who post personal things on blogs, now I’m that person with a vengeance, and it only took three months.
In my case, I’m positive it started around the time I started that series called ‘My Generation.’ I’m neither proud nor ashamed of it, it was a risky piece that contained some of my best and worst writing. But what it required was that I had no shame about writing about all sorts of things, be it my ‘struggles’ with family, schools, health, employment, or relationships, it would have required me to write as though I have no concern as to what I write online about myself. The reason I was able to do it is because, to a certain extent, I don’t. I don’t care what most people think of me, because frankly, most people are at least as idiotic as I am. Those who understand the spirit in which such writing is intended probably had certain moments in their life when they were as idiotic as me. Those who wouldn’t understand it are idiotic in completely different ways.
But eventually a few realizations face you whether or not you face them: the first of course is that the world is run by such idiots, and they’re usually of the latter camp - it’s amazing how often power and humor don’t correlate. The employment world might be able to take on a person who struggles with learning disabilities and depression, but they’d emphatically not take a person who struggles with some of the things I’d planned on writing about later in the piece. What are they?....Know me better, then maybe I’ll be idiot enough to tell you.
The second realization is that when you start trafficking in untrammeled self-revelation, the rest of your writing becomes a slave to it. Once you begin to talk about the more vulnerable parts of the self, you have to cross every “t” to make sure that everyone who might be affected by what you say takes minimal offense. Once you start dealing in ‘baggage’ and the effect it has on the people around you, you have to give every nuance of their side, even if it compromises your own. When I ended Part I of ‘My Generation’ with the line, ‘love will be what saves us.’ I’d been inspired to write the piece by the wedding of two friends, and I found myself quite moved by my own writing. It seemed like precisely the right note upon which to end the first part of that piece that would eventually build in part-five to a tableau from the wedding. But now, three months later, I can’t bare to look at it. I have no idea if love will save us or me or you or anyone else, there are plenty of people it hasn’t saved.
It was right around the time I wrote this piece that I started getting the complements of people from the ‘homestead’ who’d apparently been reading the blog and awoke quite suddenly to the fact that I could write. It’s wonderful to get those complements, but I can’t help wondering if my writing would even have been noticed had I written something less complementary, regardless of quality. The truth is, I have no desire to write anything uncomplimentary, and I don’t think there is anyone there deserving of anything uncomplimentary written about them publicly - it’s one thing to write about yourself, another entirely when it’s about others. And this problem wouldn’t even exist if I didn’t have so many more uncomplimentary things to say about myself than about others. So as the saying goes,...never look a gifthorse in the mouth, or at least that’s what I was taught in Pikesville.
The third realization, and perhaps the most important, is that writing about oneself can be like an addiction. There is only one thing more solipsistic than sitting at a computer to write, and that’s sitting at a computer to write about yourself. We’re not all Montaigne, and there is only so many interesting thoughts about oneself one can have without boring the crap out of us all. There’s no prize for digging into the ever more insignificant trivialities of your own existence except the one you give. The subject of this blog is supposed to be whatever interests me, and it’s given me a more inexhaustible stream of writing than I ever thought would flow. I would not like to learn in twenty years that the subject that most interested me was myself.
So I will try to get back to more substantial essays on this blog. However daunting it seems, however much hard work it is, I should write more like my ‘early stuff’, in which I wrote long essays on Jon Stewart and Johnny Cash and J.K. Rowling and other people whose names begin with Jo. As for all that leftover unfinished material, maybe it can fit into other essays. Perhaps I can use it as interesting anecdotal material that will add color to whatever ‘substantial’ essay I’m writing at the time. Though maybe it’s not defined enough...maybe it needs more back story....
And even in those moments when the words do come, there’s a 50/50 shot that you can’t finish it. Sometimes you’ve written four excellent paragraphs only for the fifth to fail you, so you skip paragraph five with the intention of doubling back. Six and seven come easily, but paragraph eight is similarly uncooperative. You begin to lose your concept, paragraphs nine and ten are muddled at best, and by paragraph 11, you’ve lost the entire train of the argument. The words don’t come, and there’s no way to form the concept you have in your head. “Onto the next post!” you say, only for the next post to be still more fraught with difficulty than the last one.
I’m sure that every writer has a different reason for writer’s block. Mine is usually a failure of nerve, not ability. The ability to write like me doesn’t necessarily require talent, but it requires an army of nerve. It requires the ability to have no compunctions about writing whatever personal stuff pops into your head with as little filter as possible, because once the censor gains a foothold, it’s nearly impossible to get him to back down.
Nerve is my most reliable friend. Without him, I’d have been lying for the last twenty years on my parents couch in a fetal position, my thumb in my mouth. It always surprises people when I say that I’m an extremely shy person, but I am, and I’ve been compensating for that ever since I’ve had memories.
In my twenties, I’ve heard over and over that watching me at parties is a bit like watching a cartoon character or performance art - in which I might say or do something so completely outrageous that it can’t help be remembered five years later. Knowing some of the stunts I’ve pulled in social situations, I can’t call this a lie. No one has less shame than I about making a fool of himself, or saying outrageous things about others. It’s my job. Wherever I go, I’m the court jester - and however debasing it is to be a such a clown, the jester is still the second-most powerful person in court, saying out loud with impunity what others never dare.
So whatever I say out loud to embarrass myself, others can’t say before me. But this description is entirely at variance with the person I know myself to be - not because I consider myself particularly deep, only because I consider myself extremely inhibited. I’m far too happy being alone for 48 hours at a time to be anything resembling an extrovert. The person I am in public, hilarious as I might find him (and as others do too - occasionally), is absolutely not me. I’m far too uncomfortable around people to let the real thing out. It makes me a very good performer and a very fine conductor for certain musicians (though an equally awful one for others). Like all introverts, I prefer a gathering of 3 friends to 30. And like all performers, I prefer an audience of 300 to 30. The problem is neither intimacy nor crowds, the problem is a large gathering of individuals. The small crowd is my mortal enemy. The worst part of any day is the moment after I’ve said something awful and am waiting for a reaction - it might be laughter, it might be a grimace, it might be a slap. How much more compounded is that reaction when you have to earn the laughter of 11 friends rather than 1? And because I so dread the small crowd, I’ve become uncommonly good at entertaining it.
Nowhere is this more the case lately than with my 30th birthday party. Thirty is not the worst of the arbitrary birthday milestones, but it is the first of the bad ones. Once you’ve hit thirty, you’re unmistakably ‘over-the-hill.’ From thirty until whenever it is, you are officially past the extent of your physical, mental, and emotional capacities. If some people, more worthwhile people, peak past thirty, it’s because they learn how to better manage whatever resources they have left. But what is worst about turning thirty is the knowledge that, for the first time in your life, you’re working with less potential than you ever had before. From thirty onward, the limitations just keep growing. So it’s safe to say that I’m dreading this birthday, and all the moreso given the new situation in which my life finds itself.
About two months ago, as the move to my new apartment reached a fever pitch of complications, landlord arguments, and DIY furniture disasters, a thought occurred to me that saddened me terribly. It’s only when all this moving is finally done that the real work begins. I may have grown up in Baltimore, but I’ve long since turned Washingtonian - for a decade, virtually all my friends have either lived or moved away from DC, all the hangouts I knew were in DC, and DC is still the only city around which I can drive without being guaranteed to get lost. Without having ever held a paid political position, I’d become fixated on following politics as only a longtime Washingtonian can be. I moved to Baltimore permanently to take a job in the ‘family business’, but aside from this business, I have no business in Baltimore. It’s a city I neither understood nor appreciated as a kid and swore that I would leave the moment I got an opportunity and never return. Now that the two-month nightmare of moving is over, I’m now living the second nightmare of making peace with the city I so hated as a teenager.
So I therefore thought to myself about how best I could ease myself into this ‘city transfer’ in which a mere 40 miles makes the difference between home and a strange land. I have no reason to think that my DC friends will ever visit me in Baltimore except to trust that they will visit this underrated city (and friend?) out of the goodness of their hearts - you will...won’t you??? Certainly, I will get to know plenty of Baltimoreans before long, but the road to social business currently requires two hours of driving. Perhaps I could have an event - not immediately, but soon - in which I can introduce my newfound cohorts in Baltimore to my eight divisions of DC cohorts so that I might create one giant DC-Baltimore legion. But I have no wedding and certainly no Christening with which I might summon friends soon from near and far. All I have is that dreaded, awful thirtieth birthday which I would prefer to call a regular day in the life of a twenty-six year old.
And so I decided to put on a thirtieth birthday party. I come down to DC all the time, it’s high time people came to Baltimore for me - and come they are. People look to be coming not only from DC but from Maine, Boston, New Jersey, New York, Illinois, Phoenix, and San Francisco also. But such an event is no easy task to put together. Merely putting the date together has already been the cause of multiple awkward emails. Now, let’s be clear, these emails were in no way awkward - ok...that’s not entirely true... Most of these emails were in no way awkward. They were merely awkward in my head and shall remain so until the moment this party is over.
Just to give one example: there is a friend of mine, not a close one, but one whom I’ve long thought I could be better friends with, but for whatever reason we’ve always remained on opposite sides of the social circle. Perhaps this person doesn’t particularly like me, and frankly I’m long past the point of caring. But this person’s been dating a girl for a number of years, and when they first got together I made a point of being very nice to the girlfriend. In the three odd years since they became an item, they’ve become the inseparable couple “____ and _____”, one very nearly as much a part of the social circle as the other. And so after I sent out the email, I got an email back from the ‘girlfriend’, who says “As always, thanks for the heads up:).”
A perfectly legitimate, polite response. But the neurotic in me reads the “As always” and thinks “.....Oh dear...” To a normal person, this no doubt means ‘you’ve always been considerate.’ But this is me about whom she’s talking about, and I’m generally of the opinion that I’m quite obnoxious, so how could she possible think better of me? My instinct tells me that there is a 70% chance that this means ‘Shut the f&^% up already!!’
So after five seconds of thought, I respond with what I think is precisely the right balance of self-deprecation and sincerity. “As always, clogging your inbox is the least I can do:).” If I sent too many emails about the party, as I no doubt have, this is the perfect way to shrug it off/apologize. So I send it off, and I think nothing of it for fifteen minutes.
…”as always, clogging your inbox is the least I can do :)”....
‘Clogging your inbox....oh god....that’s a double entendre. Does that sound like I might be making a pass at her? Oh god, it kind of does. And if that sounds like I’m making a pass, it’s the single worst pass in the history of emails. Oh god, I honestly don’t know which bothers me more: the fact that it sounds like I’m hitting on her, or the fact that it would be the clumsiest pass ever...Well she is attractive, maybe you subconsciously inserted a Freudian slip. Isn’t ‘insert’ a Freudian slip? Oh my god, SHUT UP EVAN!’
And knowing myself as I do, I guarantee you that I will anxiously pursue this line of thought once a day nearly every day until this party. It’s bad enough to live in dread of being an inconsiderate douche who would hurt one’s friends. It’s bad enough to live in dread of being a total social idiot. But to be both simultaneously is a dread I don’t wish on my worst enemy. Furthermore, I guarantee that the one thing to make me keep worrying in precisely this loop is to write about it and post it. Which I shall soon do. As always, self-deprecating comedy is much more important than the stability of friendships.
And therein lies the problem. I have become far too self-revealing in what I’ve written on this blog. It’s become like a substance addiction whose presence or absence defines my life. I used to be the person who laughed at people who post personal things on blogs, now I’m that person with a vengeance, and it only took three months.
In my case, I’m positive it started around the time I started that series called ‘My Generation.’ I’m neither proud nor ashamed of it, it was a risky piece that contained some of my best and worst writing. But what it required was that I had no shame about writing about all sorts of things, be it my ‘struggles’ with family, schools, health, employment, or relationships, it would have required me to write as though I have no concern as to what I write online about myself. The reason I was able to do it is because, to a certain extent, I don’t. I don’t care what most people think of me, because frankly, most people are at least as idiotic as I am. Those who understand the spirit in which such writing is intended probably had certain moments in their life when they were as idiotic as me. Those who wouldn’t understand it are idiotic in completely different ways.
But eventually a few realizations face you whether or not you face them: the first of course is that the world is run by such idiots, and they’re usually of the latter camp - it’s amazing how often power and humor don’t correlate. The employment world might be able to take on a person who struggles with learning disabilities and depression, but they’d emphatically not take a person who struggles with some of the things I’d planned on writing about later in the piece. What are they?....Know me better, then maybe I’ll be idiot enough to tell you.
The second realization is that when you start trafficking in untrammeled self-revelation, the rest of your writing becomes a slave to it. Once you begin to talk about the more vulnerable parts of the self, you have to cross every “t” to make sure that everyone who might be affected by what you say takes minimal offense. Once you start dealing in ‘baggage’ and the effect it has on the people around you, you have to give every nuance of their side, even if it compromises your own. When I ended Part I of ‘My Generation’ with the line, ‘love will be what saves us.’ I’d been inspired to write the piece by the wedding of two friends, and I found myself quite moved by my own writing. It seemed like precisely the right note upon which to end the first part of that piece that would eventually build in part-five to a tableau from the wedding. But now, three months later, I can’t bare to look at it. I have no idea if love will save us or me or you or anyone else, there are plenty of people it hasn’t saved.
It was right around the time I wrote this piece that I started getting the complements of people from the ‘homestead’ who’d apparently been reading the blog and awoke quite suddenly to the fact that I could write. It’s wonderful to get those complements, but I can’t help wondering if my writing would even have been noticed had I written something less complementary, regardless of quality. The truth is, I have no desire to write anything uncomplimentary, and I don’t think there is anyone there deserving of anything uncomplimentary written about them publicly - it’s one thing to write about yourself, another entirely when it’s about others. And this problem wouldn’t even exist if I didn’t have so many more uncomplimentary things to say about myself than about others. So as the saying goes,...never look a gifthorse in the mouth, or at least that’s what I was taught in Pikesville.
The third realization, and perhaps the most important, is that writing about oneself can be like an addiction. There is only one thing more solipsistic than sitting at a computer to write, and that’s sitting at a computer to write about yourself. We’re not all Montaigne, and there is only so many interesting thoughts about oneself one can have without boring the crap out of us all. There’s no prize for digging into the ever more insignificant trivialities of your own existence except the one you give. The subject of this blog is supposed to be whatever interests me, and it’s given me a more inexhaustible stream of writing than I ever thought would flow. I would not like to learn in twenty years that the subject that most interested me was myself.
So I will try to get back to more substantial essays on this blog. However daunting it seems, however much hard work it is, I should write more like my ‘early stuff’, in which I wrote long essays on Jon Stewart and Johnny Cash and J.K. Rowling and other people whose names begin with Jo. As for all that leftover unfinished material, maybe it can fit into other essays. Perhaps I can use it as interesting anecdotal material that will add color to whatever ‘substantial’ essay I’m writing at the time. Though maybe it’s not defined enough...maybe it needs more back story....
Thursday, February 2, 2012
Quote of the Day:
The Manning: you dont' have early onset altzheimers
besides
i have terrible long-term memory, and it makes my life awesome
besides
i have terrible long-term memory, and it makes my life awesome
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