Posts tagged with "life" - Faerye Net

Dickens on post-holiday blues

2011-01-07T17:41:38+00:00

Oh these holidays! why will they leave us some regret? why cannot we push them back, only a week or two in our memories, so as to put them at once at that convenient distance whence they may be regarded either with a calm indifference or a pleasant effort of recollection! why will they hang about us, like the flavour of yesterday’s wine, suggestive of headaches and lassitude, and those good intentions for the future, which, under the earth, form the everlasting pavement of a large estate, and, upon it, usually endure until dinner-time or thereabouts!

Who will wonder that Barbara had a headache, or that Barbara’s mother was disposed to be cross, or that she slightly underrated Astley’s, and thought the clown was older than they had taken him to be last night? Kit was not surprised to hear her say so—not he. He had already had a misgiving that the inconstant actors in that dazzling vision had been doing the same thing the night before last, and would do it again that night, and the next, and for weeks and months to come, though he would not be there. Such is the difference between yesterday and today. We are all going to the play, or coming home from it.
-The Old Curiosity Shop

I myself have been happily free from post-holiday blues this year. Perhaps such equanimity is the curse of growing maturity, for as Dickens’s closing figure suggests, the descent into melancholy is the obverse of a glorious ascent into joy. I am sure I do not enjoy Christmas nearly so much now as I did when I was a child, for all I do not grieve its going so bitterly.

Oddly, in spite of the Christian (culturally so, for I see that it’s imputed to a medieval abbot, not to Jesus) image of the road to hell’s paving stones, this passage reminds me of the Buddhist idea of samsara, as I learned it in high school. This churning rise and fall of desire and disappointment, aspiration and disgust, does seem to be cyclical, a bit sad, and oh so human.

Observations

2010-07-06T12:46:57+00:00

One of the first things I learned in writing school was to watch more closely. My first advisor in graduate school (and author of the upcoming MFA in a Box), John Rember, pointed out to me that being a writer is not just writing: it’s how you see the world.

Before I went to grad school, I already loved little idiosyncratic details. I loved noticing how one thing was so unexpectedly like another, and deploying that likeness in prose to give someone a jolt of recognition. I loved stealing a gesture from a passerby and teasing it out into a character. But I more or less relied on those details to come to me. I wrote things down when I noticed them, but I didn’t go out into the world, eyes open, ears pricked and (figurative) antennae agape in order to gather them. Now I do.

A few things I have noticed recently:

A lone strawberry sitting in the road on a rural highway, pointing up like a caltrop.

A man in an workman’s orange vest sitting on a traffic control box he had scaled with the help of a nearby stepladder. He was holding a package and apparently doing nothing.

Teenage girls in summer dresses stealing a series of appraising glances at disreputably attired young men getting out of a van next to a venue (and thus, presumably, in a band).

A highly-polished Jaguar in a shade of gold so extreme as to resemble baby poop, with scythed wheels.

A petite woman in silver shoes and a sequined tunic posing motionless for a long time while her photographer fiddled with his camera.

A man in baggy khakis and a burgundy polo crossing Terwilliger to stare fixedly into the sloping forest. He looked exactly like Bill Gates.

Lanky siblings, long and slender with their teenage growth, cramming themselves onto swings and seesaws at the park and trading insults and boasts. Their hair was a light fine blond, like toddlers’, but their brows were dark and straight.

These are the observations that lent themselves to blogular explanation, not the weird sensory notes that will take some time to resolve and render into words. Not all of these are worth using. None of them immediately gives me a story seed (give me time.) But I accrete these images and moments all the time, and it’s hard to predict when one will blossom, or, set next to my current idea or problem, suddenly connect. Moreover, just collecting them gives me a sense of glee. It makes me feel a part of the world, its weirdness and whimsy and occasional joy.

In Psych 101, we learned that you could strengthen your sense of smell by practicing. Our professor noted that many people didn’t want to increase their nasal sensitivity because they thought they would be inundated with bad smells, but this isn’t the case. She said that apparently the brain always registers bad smells, because they are potential threats: when you train up your nose, you smell more (and more complex) pleasant or neutral odors. I immediately started training my nose.

I wonder if there’s a similar effect with the multi-sensory observations I make of the world. I noticed some time ago that I am generally happier, mellower and more at peace than I used to be, and I wonder if part of this is from the discipline of observation I’ve acquired. “The impulse to write comes from the impulse to love,” my final advisor, Jack Driscoll, says. Perhaps observing the world closely is a way of loving it.

Update: Related post here.

Comfy shoes

2009-04-05T17:49:41+00:00

I think costuming is meaningful. Maybe that sounds odd, but it’s an important part of the look of a show, the messaging of a theatre production, et cetera.

But I have this problem, a disconnect between the way I think and the way Hollywood people do. It’s encapsulated well by a recent episode of Dollhouse, where the same professional thief character (being played by two different actresses) repeats that she she has rules to “never second-guess a client, and wear comfy shoes”. They say this twice, in two pairs of identical boots, with stilettos around six inches tall.

This dredged up one of my televisual pet peeves. Women in standing, walking and running professions in ridiculously high heels. Dr. Cameron, the female doctor on House, for example, working long hours and pursuing a suicidal patient. ’Cuz, you know, I always notice the wicked heels on hospital staff.

Now, I own heels. I can even walk in them. They can be pretty and fun. A chunky heel can even offer some comfort and ease of use. But we’re not talking about chunky heels, or cowboy boots. We’re talking about spikes at four inches plus, which may perhaps be an everyday shoe for Hollywood, but probably not for a professional thief, or a junior doctor, or…a homicide detective.

Now, admittedly all I know about how female homicide detectives dress I learned from Landsman’s dress code lectures on The Wire. On that show it involved pantsuits, and, at least in Greggs’s case, a sturdy chunk heel. Other shows (and shoes) vary: since Life is set in LA, it’s a little less dressy: Reese wears a button-up shirt under a jacket, usually, and again, a sensible heel like a cowboy or chunky boot (Sarah Shahi’s a lot shorter than her co-star, so some heel is usually in evidence.) But Castle, in the two episodes I’ve watched, has made me crazy. They have a very tall, model-tall in fact, actress playing an NYPD homicide detective. And while my suspension of disbelief is bruised by noting her four different up-to-the-minute coats in one episode (two leather) and trailing pashmina scarfs to match, it’s positively shattered when she brushes her impractical bangs out of her eyes in order to yell “NYPD” and kick down a door when we clearly saw her deadly wobble-pumps in the adjacent scene. Not to mention when she kicks a knife away from a suspect with a retro round-toe number better suited to ballroom than brawl.

Seriously, Hollywood, maybe your costumers like showroom shoes, maybe your directors just want the character to look ‘pretty’ and don’t care what that means, maybe the writer who knows the character’s personality gets no input into these choices at all, maybe you all live in a Hollywood bubble where women are all size zero and wear lipstick to bed. But out here in watcherland, we would like to be able to believe in our heroines as well as our heroes. Which means we need to believe a badass cop can chase down a perp or kick down a door. And having walked a block in her shoes, I feel certain she can’t.

Top Ten Reasons You Should Be Watching "Life"

2009-03-26T22:23:49+00:00

A while back, I started watching Life. There were two reasons for this. One is that all the episodes that then existed were free online at Hulu. The other reason is Damian Lewis, who played Winters in Band of Brothers, and, along with Ron Livingston, made me feel very conflicted. Is it wrong to crush on actors when they’re playing real people who are as old as my grandpa and portraying important historical events? Oh, the conflict.

At any rate, I was hooked on Life immediately, but didn’t spread the news. I think I was obscurely ashamed of the show, mostly because it is weird. It’s a good weird, though. A very deliberate weird. So, I’m letting the world know: if you’re not watching Life, you should be.

Top Ten Reasons You Should Be Watching Life:

10. It’s not like every other cop show. Since the premise (cop Charlie Crews gets sentenced to life for triple murder he didn’t commit, then gets exonerated and insists on being a cop again as part of his settlement) is a little far-fetched, so is everything else. The murders, suspects and situations are zany, often surreal. It’s not a cop show that could be set anywhere but LA. It’s not a cop show you could confuse with any old procedural on the air.

9. Crews’s silly amounts of money. And the silly things the show does with it, like the musical chairs with Charlie’s car.

8. Cinematography. Ryan can tell you more about this, but it’s not shot like any old show, either. Nice light, interesting angles.

7. No goddamn inter-partner sexual tension. Yes, Damian Lewis and Sarah Shahi are both hot. Yes, the viewing public will probably enjoy that. No, the writers are not using it to create constant, stupid sexual tension like every show for the last twenty-plus years of television. Hallelujah!

6. Surprises. They’re not shaking up the formula every week or pulling a Joss every season, but there are enough people getting shot or starting relationships that you didn’t expect that you stay on your toes.

5. The music. Ryan says the DVD doesn’t have the same music as the aired episodes (I believe Hulu does) but it tends to be unusual, good, and add to the episodes in an intelligent, fun way.

4. The supporting characters. Often mystery shows that have to present a new cast of suspects and victims every week fall into shorthand, but this show doesn’t rely on that. They depict different parts of a very diverse LA every week, and the characters are idiosyncratic, varied, human. Some of the recurring characters are played by great actors like Adam Arkin and (Saffron/Yolanda/Bridget) Christina Hendricks.

3. Sarah Shahi. Danni Reese could have been a simple straight-man cop character, but Shahi does a fabulous job of depicting her with layers and edges.

2. The writing. There’s the cop banter over the weird cases, Charlie’s ongoing attempts to view his odd life through Zen, his off-kilter questions to suspects, and his unquenchable passion for fruit. It’s unexpected without trying too hard. It’s droll without being dumb.

1. Damian Lewis. He’s a fabulous actor. I mean, I like Hugh Laurie as much as the next Wodehouse addict, but Damian Lewis’s American accent is the best I can recall hearing from a Brit. And his delivery of all the great lines in #2? Pitch-perfect straight-faced hilarity. His character is complex and winning.

Of course the show has its weak points. Everything does. I am not 100% convinced they had cemented the entire backstory/conspiracy before they started writing it, and there are some conceits and characters in Season 1 they ditched by Season 2. But it’s a good show, only getting better. Go watch Life.