On PROMETHEUS

This movie is messy. Both in the horror/sci-fi sense with blood and violence, but also in the plot sense. But I think the writers had some sense of what they were trying to do: hint at possibilities without being concrete. Not a surprise they wrote for Lost.

Plus, I think there are some intriguing possibilities when it comes to the plot.

Spoilers ahead. Duh.

THE OPENING

It struck me that the opening was weird -- was it a metaphor or literal? Would aliens really drop down on the surface and sacrifice their bodies to create a new life form based on their own DNA? Sure. why not. It seems pretty inefficient, but let's just accept that it's the process they tested and decided upon. who needs robots or unmanned probes. 

In fact, let's not even assume that this was a scientist. Let's assume he was a religious figure.  The robe hints at that. Maybe this was a guy that sacrificed himself for some grand, egotistical scheme. He believes he's a god or he wants to feel like one. So, maybe he's not left behind; maybe he sneaks away. We'll call him Engineer Zero.

And maybe when the other Engineers find out what Zero's done they have to erase his mistake. they don't want Zero's creation littering up this planet they found that could be a perfect colony.

Might the Engineers have decided to destroy humans simply because the humans were created out of vanity by a powerful, rich CEO/Scientist/Crackpot? Created just because they could be created? Or maybe the entire race created humans and then, like tossing a bad poem or smashing a lopsided clay pot, destroyed the humans because they aren't nearly as good as vanity demands?

Interesting, but not enough proof to be SURE. Plus, if my friend Mike is correct, Ridley Scott has said that the Engineers did put their DNA on earth this way. He didn't say it was a one-man vanity project. But...

Should we make the mistake and assume that the Engineers are one cohesive people?  What if we think more like the human society being featured -- the one where Weyland industries as trillions of dollars to spend on a vanity project? What if an Engineer (not THE ENGINEERS) created Human Beings as a vanity project? what if there's a company or a faction of Engineers that wanted to CREATE a being; it's not the goal of the entire race of Engineers. it's a vanity project of one particular Engineer company. The Engineer Weyland Industries.

Or, perhaps this: what if humans are not a vanity project -- immortality for an individual or an entire race -- but are genetic engineered weapon project version 1.0 and the Aliens (acid drooling, insectoid Geiger aliens) are version 2.0? Ver 1.0 is "see if you can create a form of life that's purely biological, not an android. Then, Version 2.0 is see if you can create a purely biological weapon.

Or what if humans are simply created as food to feed the weapons. Create a whole planet of food and then deliver the black goop and then you've got a planet manufacturing plant and warehouse. Trouble is the weapon is too aggressive, the military base gets destroyed as they are making final preparations to deliver the goop, leaving the food source to evolve and begin assuming it's 'special' -- like a McDonald's hamburger left in the sun, gaining sentience, and convincing itself it was created for something more than becoming lodged in the large colon of a Geiger monster.

Creating life makes me feel powerful until I see that the creation is not on the same grand level as me. How sad. David even points out to Charlie: "Wouldn't you feel disappointed if you got the same response from your creator?" when Charlie says David was created just because humans had the ability to do it. 

Creation for the sake of creation is a vane pursuit. It's good science to explore and experiment, but with the religious impulse of humans it will inevitably lead to the worship of science/technology and the disappointment with the creations. 

The Engineers may have simply decided to destroy humans because they were too primitive. Made out of pride; destroyed out of disappointment. Humans didn't DO anything wrong. 

This of course also leads us to look at why there's such an emphasis on MALE creation and the horrors associated with FEMALE creation.

ALL THE PENISES AND VAGINAS

Enough people have pointed out the psychological trauma of men being impregnated in Alien. Prometheus does not reduce the amount of gender imagery. In fact, I think it does an even better job of expanding on the idea of gender conflicts and makes a more forceful illustration of the terror men feel when they feel like they are useless. science and money and technology makes men feel useful; men hoard power because it hides their biologically temporary usefulness (men provide genetic material and then the female does the rest of the work; except with sea horses and a few other creatures. but seahorses didn't take over the planet, so clearly the female-as-baby-maker is the more successful form of reproduction).

Overall, I think the film argues supports the longstanding argument that men yearn to create life and resent the fact that females actually do 99% of the creating when it comes to human reproduction. Race of Engineers, we can assume, have the same issue. Men have power to destroy but wish they could create AS WELL. (No idea how the engineers reproduce, but since we share their DNA we must assume it's similar. not like viruses or with eggs, which is why the Alien aliens are so terrifying.)

Consider the various gender conflicts presented throughout the film:

Vickers -- daughter of Weyland, the guy that wants to live forever or at least be the man to face his creator. Vickers is resentful of male android who gets father's affection; clear that father does not respect Vickers; clear that she wishes he would just DIE already. She's a tough chick in a difficult place: she knows the agenda (her father's vanity is essentially the financial engine behind everything, including the expedition); but she also knows that the people on board the ship are a mixture of science nerds and "true believers." In fact the "truest" believer is a female, while Vickers believes the markings are the scrawls of animals (my paraphrase). Vickers would prefer in a more mundane, scientific explanation -- that there are no creators. that no creature or race would have power over humans. It would mean Vickers, once she's head of Weyland industries, would be close to a god.

Plus, isn't it fitting that the Captain asks Vickers if she's a robot and the way she disproves this is to have sex with him? her only power is her genitalia. and also that's the way she has to identify herself in a male world. I think Vickers is the saddest character of all. I feel like Dr. Shaw's challenged faith is pretty tame compared to what Vickers ends up going through. And i'm sad that Vickers gets killed as I think her journey to the stars (with or without Shaw) would've been even more telling. Does she take up her father's cause or Dr. Shaw's? Vickers and David in a ship looking for the Engineers? Now THAT's a story.

Weyland -- dude is human vanity personified. Uses all money and technology at his disposal to face his creator and is rightly murdered for it. In many ways, human stories suggest that one CAN face a creator and win: Zeus overthrows his father and then fears being overthrown himself; the stories of kings are the stories of vanity and fear of death. Even the Christian tradition allows for humans to "face" their god -- Moses and Noah, amongst a few others, get face time with God. Jesus is both god & man. So, it's not surprising that Weyland believes he will have a chance to ask questions of his god.

Sadly, he forgets the story of Job, a story that's much older than much of the old testament. Weyland also ignores the older version of the flood myth where Utnapishtim -- the Sumerian/Akkadian Noah -- is protected by one god when the other gods decide to wipe out humanity. Utnapishtim is then forced to live apart from humans because he was from before the flood. He's deemed special, but not a god. Some of the god's hate that he survived. But Job is the one that asks questions and is reprimanded. Not with death like Weyland, but intellectually: god tells Job "you do not have my creative power, you did not create the earth, the trees, the sea monsters, so how dare you presume you can question me about why you suffer!" The Engineer that whacks Weyland in the face takes less time to make the same point. (Curiously, Job gets all his stuff back and new, better looking daughters. But that's another analysis...)

Weyland deems himself powerful enough to look a god in the face; that god smacks him down (note, too, that Weyland dies of head trauma -- the head being the seat of sentience -- while David has his head ripped off of his body, essentially isolating his sentience from his body, the thing that represents his biological humanness (recall that Charlie says David has no biological processes, but even so David needs senses to analyze the world. A digestive tract? not so much.

Plus, David but does not die -- he will be able to continually explore this issue because he has no soul; Weyland says "there is nothing" and David confirms this but still says "enjoy your journey." David might actually have the potential to understand the nature of the soul, even without 'having' one.)

<image removed, but you can google it I swear!>

Fassbender as David is awesome. Just look at him all awesome there.

David -- made in "man's image" David is the obvious parallel to the creation of human beings by an Engineer. David says that despite not needing biological human processes (breathing, eating) he looks human because it makes human's more comfortable. But we know that it's not comfort but vanity. Weyland calls David his "son" who lacks a soul. David is made to look like a human. Even David has some sense of self in dying his hair and mimicking TE Lawrence as portrayed by blue-eyed Peter O'Toole in Lawrence of Arabia (a movie about an outsider in a desert much like David is an outside amongst humans in the desert of deep space).

David's gender conflict is that he has a proscribed gender (male) but no need for a gender. He is not a biological creature but is still a man. He and Vickers are perfectly at odds -- both are cold, but Vickers has one of 2 emotional moments when she slams David against the wall and demands information. (The other is when she has to torch Charlie.)

Engineers -- all male. We have no sense of female presence on the entire planet. the ship in the beginning could be called an Ova, though the military ship is a bent penis or a snake eating itself. Either way, the moon the Engineers used to create their weapons of mass destruction is masculine: tombs with male faces, a mountain peak jutting into the sky, the comment "god does not build straight lines" made by Charlie.

Black Goop Created Creatures -- There's all these hints of phalluses and vaginas here. Once the black goop begins to transform the worms in the dirt of the tomb, we get the first vagina. The worm looks sperm-like when it raises out of the black goop, but as the idiot biologist (who says "good girl" and "what a pretty girl") approaches, the sperm-like work opens up and reveals a toothed vagina (and there's that classic toothy vagina myth, of course). The worm is male AND female. Not surprising that it grabs idiot biologist, breaks his arm, and then penetrates him and impregnates him. The biologist is raped (just as the face-huggers rape the men and women in the Alien films).


Dr. Shaw -- performs an abortion on herself. There's no need to belabor the suggestions here. The machine is "calibrated for male patients only" and she must improvise. (the machine is clearly there for Weyland and not Vickers.) She suffers through a c-section of sorts, the horrible alien fetus is removed from her, and she's stapled back together. She's a modified virgin mother -- sterile but impregnated by the aliens (because the Engineers are godlike they can impregnate a sterile woman just like god impregnates the virgin Mary. if you're willing to believe that Mary's a virgin, but it seems more like she'd had sex with her husband but was IMPREGNATED without having sex. immaculate conception yes, virgin no.)

Dr. Shaw is caught in between two intriguing binaries: she's a woman, but cannot get pregnant; she's a scientist that believes aliens created humans but believes in God (or, at least, wears a cross? It's not as clear as it could be).

Oh, and David snooped on her dreams and memories while she slept (a memory rape). So, she's also the equal partner of a scientific duo with Charlie, but also under the thumb of 2 men: Weyland & David.

CONCLUSIONS

In the end, I think Prometheus is fascinating and flawed. As a movie it has great moments of tension, some astounding visuals (some "ruined" by the trailer), good music, great acting, and a reasonably pleasing set of possible interpretations. I just feel like it could be a little more on the nose about one or two things instead of being so satisfied with the "I am still searching" conclusion offered by Dr. Shaw's voiceover. 

Interesting collection of quotations that elaborates on some of the vagueness.
http://www.ign.com/wikis/prometheus/Official_Quotes

What makes a band "dated"?

"Tonight / I'm gonna have myself / a real good time." -- "Don't Stop Me Now"

Recently my wife and I stumbled upon the Palladia channel on cable and watched the second half of a fantastic Queen concert from Montreal that has been remastered sometime recently.

My wife LOVES Queen. I, too, love Queen, but not as much as her. She knows the lyrics to more than just Bohemian Rhapsody and We Will Rock You. She's certainly not a huge fan as compared to others, but in our house she easily takes the honor.

GLORIOUS.

I found myself recalling various things about Queen that I've learned throughout the years -- from Freddie Mercury's demise, to the lyrics to "Bicycle Race" (back in 4th grade, my friend's father used to sing it constantly), to the fact that Brian May can play a mean guitar. What I never considered, though, was the fact that Queen doesn't exist anymore. Or, to put it more precisely, Queen-like bands don't exist anymore. Rock music's too cynical.

Cynicism has made Queen seem dated.

(NPR even published this short piece for "Old Music Tuesday." Clearly there's something in the air.)

I don't mean in the "Queen sounds too naive/simplistic/crappy compared to current bands." I mean there's no one else out there that tries to sound like them or can sound like them or will sound like them. They might be one of the most talented, fun, skilled, and (most importantly) successful bands ever. Yes, The Beatles had fun and their albums were ahead of their time, trippy, layered, meaningful, etc. The 60s and 70s had lots of fun music. Led Zeppelin, too. Pink Floyd. But post-Queen? Who compares?

Consider what they were: a 70s British Arena-rock band with a flamboyant frontman. They collectively wrote orchestrated songs ranging from goofy (the aforementioned "Bicycle Race") to serious ("You're My Best Friend.") "We Are the Champions" and "We Will Rock You" will forever play in stadiums across the USA, if not around the world because they are earnest anthems. They have a song about the radio ("Radio Ga-Ga") -- to be fair, so does Hall & Oats. They wrote the goddamn soundtrack to Flash, a campy sci-fi radio-show-turned-80s-movie. It was the soundtrack Queen was born to record.

They are one of the few bands I can think of that takes being not-serious, seriously. And can still be serious when they want.

Think about the arena-rock bands that have followed them:

• Journey -- big music. didn't take themselves too seriously. Steve Perry has a tremendous voice and they made an intentional shift in songwriting in the late 70s to embrace a more commercial sound, resulting in their "peak" performance albums Escape and Frontiers.
• Def Leppard -- terrible lyrics, great guitarist, decent Journey-esque singer. Hysteria sold over 12 million copies, doubling their prior album. But 2 albums of 80s-arena-rock does not compare to Queen in terms of success. Plus, their multiple hits from Hysteria don't stand up to some of the unique, iconic Queen songs.
• Aerosmith (to be fair, didn't really "follow" Queen, but developed around the same time) -- American rock -- a very light Zeppelin, particularly back in the late 70s. Once they got off the drugs for a while, they were more a light Journey than anything else. Lots of hit songs; flamboyant frontman; didn't take themselves seriously. And while I dislike 99% of their catalog, they remained successful, albeit not necessarily relevant, up to the end of the 20th century. Not sure they match the skill of Queen.
• Van Halen -- The less I say, the better, but this is a successful arena rock band that swings between serious and silly. David Lee Roth is an American Mercury in terms of showmanship, but he lacks the consistency and the songwriting skills.
• U2 -- they take themselves very seriously, to the point where Bono's lack of lyrical prowess sounds silly in a bad way when he probably wants to be silly (from time to time) in a Queen way. (Look at the lyrics from "New York": In New York summers get hot, well into the hundreds / You can't walk around the block without a change of clothing / Hot as a hairdryer in your face / Hot as a handbag and a can of mace / In New York, I just got a place in New York." is that supposed to be funny or serious-and-thus-horrible? The song eventually talks about how the Irish came to NY as well, so I'm assuming it's supposed to be horrible.)

The so-called cock-rock bands of the late 80s are technically arena-rockers, and while they are clearly not better than Queen, they changed the landscape when it came to 'big' rock music. Could you imagine Mötley Crüe writing a song like "Fat Bottom Girls"?

Mötley Crüe started rocking in 1981 with songs like "Public Enemy #1" ("Hear the screams / Another one dies tonight") and "Come On and Dance" ("She's a leather tease / When she's on top / Well, you can't be stopped / Watch her scream / Watch her suck you clean / And you should've seen her dance.") Subtlety be damned, the Crüe will rock! (these are not the best examples of their early work, but they really don't get big for another album or two.)

Queen started 10 years prior to Crüe. In 1981, Queen released The Game, including "Crazy Little Thing Called Love" and "Another One Bites the Dust" (Vanilla Ice remembers that year well. Or, at least, the song.)

I point to Mötley Crüe not out of a person preference (I only ever owned a cassette of Dr. Feelgood); just that they are one of the biggest hair bands aside from the one band I think came close to comparing to Queen post-Queen. It's going to pain some of you (particularly my wife who breaks out into a rash when I sing this band at karaoke).

 Yes, the one band I think gets close to the stage and album theatrics, the band with the flamboyant (albeit aggressively heterosexual and misogynistic) front man, the band with the total musical skill to back it all up:

GUNS

'N

ROSES

CONSIDER:

Not even his best jumpsuit.

Try not to stare at the bulge.

Seriously. Epic songs? "November Rain", "Estranged," "Rocket Queen", "Coma", "Paradise City". Crazy-good guitarist? Slash. (He's even got Brian May-esque HAIR!)

In the end, of course, Guns N Roses has a great musical range that stems from Rose's skill as a songwriter, but on the whole he doesn't have the ability to laugh at himself. (Axl DID cover a Charles Manson song and wrote lyrics like "You're daddy worked in porno / now that mommy's not around / she used to love her heroine / but now she's underground." But he's not gonna be caught dead singing "Bicycle Race," except maybe in the shower after a long night of coke and hookers. Even then, he'd probably deny it.)

Mötley Crüe has nothing on GNR, but GNR still pales in comparison to the tremendous breadth of Queen's skill and imagination and success and overall JOY.

Still, if you doubt my GnR comparison, you can't ignore this:

That's Elton John & Axl Rose singing "Bohemian Rhapsody". Maybe Axl CAN laugh at himself.

So, here's what we have: the world has moved on from true, bright, upbeat, optimistic, nearly endlessly fun rock music. For every Jet that appears, one dies.

This is failure.

Or: How Not to Tell a Story.

Those of you keeping track of my recent exploits know that I've been taking part in the FirstPerson Arts StorySlams here in Philadelphia (home to sport- and food-related heart troubles). My prior 2 experiences in front of the mic have been described here and here. I consider these two performances successes.

On April 9th, 2012, I bombed.

Sigh indeed, CB.

As a writer I've experienced various types of rejection, but failure is something I consider philosophically, emotionally, and psychologically distinct from rejection.

While being rejected can feel like failure, it is only a failure in one way: failure to connect to a particular reader or set of readers. When The New Yorker rejects my stories, it's just a failure to tell their kind of story. No journal disputes the idea that they have particular tastes, though vague descriptions of "we just want good stories" can make a writer feel like a journal will literally publish anything when, in reality, they will only publish the stories that appeal to their tastes.

And sure, some stories are failures. But they are not failures when they are rejected. They fail first. But they fail on the page and can be reworked.

Now, as a writer, my performance is controlled and often isolated. The stories and novels I construct come together over many hours of thinking*, writing, revising, and more thinking. Much of that is done alone. Or, in my mind, which is essentially the same thing.

As an adjunct, my performances in front of the classroom can involve failure -- failure to make points clear, failure to answer student questions, etc. -- but I can, at any moment, correct those mistakes. Even if I feel like I wasn't "at my best" I don't feel like I've failed since the next class meeting can correct and adjust prior class's shortcomings. Maybe it's an unfair distinction: but the failure in the classroom feels temporary when it happens.**

So, here we are. Or, there I was, the final storyteller at the StorySlam on Monday evening. World Cafe in Philly. Full house.

I'd spent about an hour and a half practicing my story in the car and knew I'd have to be careful. The topic -- Identity Crisis -- had befuddled me for weeks. Finally, I'd decided to tell a story about how I don't drink. Except -- as is obvious by that prior sentence -- there is no story to "how I don't drink." It's an essay at best.

Worse, by the time I got picked, my planned outline had evaporated in a haze of caffeine and distraction caused by 9 other stories. As I walked up to the microphone, my mind blanked. I opened with a line I hadn't practiced:

"So. I'm an asshole."

My idea for framing my story/essay -- stumbled upon during the evening -- was to paint myself as an asshole about alcohol. This would help me tie together a bunch of random experiences to create the illusion of a story where I develop from a teenager to an adult -- shedding my negative attitude towards alcohol even though I never end up drinking. The ultimate conclusion would be that I lived my life based on a decision made by my 9th grade self, which is a pretty dumb thing to do. It makes sense in summary form.

However, because I'd practiced the story a particular way, I didn't know what to do with this new opening line. I jumped around, skipping past any narrative elements. I made a joke regarding Straight Edge music which would have been fine except another storyteller had a similar thread in her performance. I blanked on the narrative details about my time in college when I was friends with a very religious guy that found Biblical justification for wine coolers; I forgot to mention another guy that was a recovering addict but resented the fact that I'd never had a drink whereas he constantly fought the urge for the party life he'd had to leave behind.

I left out the story. In a storytelling event.

By the end, I managed to remember my conclusion, but I'd already failed. The audience had nothing to follow. My delivery suffered

In the end, I got the lowest score of the night. And I'm okay with that, though it sure helps to fail after previously succeeding.

*In the coffeeshop I consider a home, I've spent lots of time staring out the front window at the Martin's Cleaners across the street; I've also made people in my line of sight uncomfortable.

**My focus here is performance failure, not failure to educate.

A Modest Proclamation

Erik Smith claims I should not blog about this because it's making a joke about a serious thing. But that's part of the fun of being alive, right?

While sitting at my normal coffee shop / workplace, a strange conversational thread lead to this nearly offensive but genius joke.

Matt Groening tells a story about how he panicked at the last minute and, in the waiting room at Fox, replaced his idea for a Life is Hell animated show with The Simpsons, a show featuring caricatures of his family members.

Now, some dialogue:

Me: Now, who knows if that thing with Groening really happened. Same with Abraham Lincoln, right? Who knows if he really wrote the Emancipation Proclamation on the train on the way to the speech.

Andrew: Yeah, because the original idea was to EAT the slaves and he panicked.

Me: Well, that was satire, and it wouldn't really fly with his audience.

Andrew: Oh, crap. It might be better to free the slaves! 

Me: I don't want to risk losing the message in satire.

Andrew: So, it was originally a Modest Emancipation?

Me: Clearly.

A MODEST EMANCIPATION. that is the greatest lost political speech known to Western thought.

If you don't know what A Modest Proposal is, then this joke is lost on you. If making light of the composition of the Emancipation Proclamation offends you this joke, too, will be lost on you. But don't hold it against me.

What is this StorySlam stuff anyway?

My friend and fellow storyteller Andrew Panebianco convinced me to participate in the First Person Arts StorySlam back on March 12th. Despite suffering from an inconvenient and down-right evil headache that would last four days, I managed to construct and perform a story that netted me a ticket to the Grand Slam (as well as the Audience Favorite tag, something my ego quite enjoys). The Summer Grand Slam takes place at The Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts. Tickets can be purchased here. I will be there, as will 9 other fantastic storytellers. It's a saturday night in May, so you have nothing better to do!

But what the heck are these Story Slams?

Essentially:

5 minutes + 1 true story inspired by the pre-determined topic + microphone + audience = Story Slam. 

There are three judges, randomly picked, who judge on content and performance. The entire audience gets to vote on their favorite storyteller of the evening. The judge's scores determine who gets to go to the Grand Slam, an event where the ten finalists get to compete for the title of Philadelphia's Best Storyteller.

The events take place at two different locations on an alternating basis: the World Cafe, over by UPenn, and Le'Etage a hip crepery/cabaret bar on Bainbridge (down by the fascinating putridity that is South Street).

But really, this is about 5 minutes + 1 true story + microphone + audience.

I'm not a non-fiction storyteller, in any professional sense. I started with fiction back in 2nd grade with a story called "My Trip to the Moon." It won the best story award, beating out everyone else in the 2nd grade classes. (I consider it my greatest achievement, since I also drew the pictures that went with the story.) I moved to poetry in HS, a natural move since I was full of anxiety and liked the way words sound. I returned to fiction in college, then went through a non-productive lull before earning an MFA in fiction as a last-ditch attempt to be a writer before I gave up and got a real job.

Still, telling stories is telling stories. In some ways it's harder to mold the truth into a story shape since life does not always offer beginnings, middles, and ends. Fiction lets you do all sorts of crazy things without concern. Nonfiction is flexible, but at the StorySlam events, there's an honor system. The stories being told are true. And it's a challenge to take the truth of my experience and shape it into a 5 minute story without violating that rule. Sure, the storytellers conflate, reduce, restructure, add dialogue, remove people. But no one is (or should be) telling fiction.

The topic on Tuesday was "Best Ever." Despite being full of all sorts of random stories, Andrew and I both found ourselves at a loss for stories that fit this topic. While walking from the train to L'Etage, though, we had a shared epiphany -- the topic was too good, too positive. We're not positive storytellers! We want to make people feel bad about the world and thus earn cheap emotional points! We want to tear people down, because it's really easy to bum people out. As that wise philosopher Homer Simpson said about the band Smashing Pumpkins: "Making teenagers depressed is like shooting fish in a barrel."*

[*EDIT: It might have been Bart or Lisa Simpson, actually. My memory for Simpsons quotes used to be better.]

To declare something the Best Ever was to affirm that the world had good things in it! At the very core of our being, we shuddered. Best Ever? The horror! The horror!

In addition, and perhaps less juvenile, the issue with the topic (for me) was that it kept pointing me to anecdotes not stories. And instead of putting my MFA and awesome storytelling brain to work, I kept retreating and declaring the topic to be crappy. Of course, the topic was just as good as any other -- it was meant to frame and inspire an evening's worth of stories and nothing more. All of the topics for the StorySlams are just suggestive enough to get people going. Duh.

So, we arrived at L'Etage with nothing.

Creperie Beaumonde is downstairs, L'Etage is upstairs. Either way, it's hip because it serves delicious crepes.

I had practiced my prior story 6 or 7 times; this time, I had spent the afternoon driving to and from work practicing stories that had no endings or, worse, no middles. But inspiration struck as I sat drinking one of the most normal tasting bar-sodas I've ever had (seriously, can bar soda be any worse? Only those of us who don't drink suffer from this issue, but it's an impotent issue). I'm not sure the soda had magic powers, but some alignment of the stars, the lighting, the soda, and Andrew's own anxieties about storytelling caused me to dredge up a story. A full-blown story -- beginning, middle, end. (Well, the end is a bit weak, but it feels enough like an ending.)

Left for a few moments to ponder the best ever things in my life and, after striking lines through sappy but truly best ever things like my son, my wife, my recent book deal, my dog, my sister, Radiohead concerts, etc. I realized I should just embrace my negativity and tell a story about how something that was supposed to be the Best Ever was in fact pretty mediocre and, thankfully, really weird.

I'm not a cynical jerk, I just can't change how I'm hardwired.

And at least we can all laugh together, right?

Enjoy my tale of the Best Ever Hotel that was not the best ever.

My Victory at March 12th StorySlam 2012

This is a bit overdue, but I participated in the First Person Arts StorySlam in Philadelphia back on March 12. The topic was "Around the World," so I couldn't help but describe the time my first real job required that I go overseas to help train Filipino graphic designers in order to save my company money without affecting productivity. Ah, the global economy. Despite my reservations -- not just due to the fact that the trip occurred a few months after 9/11 -- I agreed to go. The experience changed my life, but also confirmed that my ethics were not well defined or, even, strong enough to guide my decisions.

Enjoy this slightly NSFW video of my performance, which earned FIRST PLACE and got me a spot at the GRAND SLAM, which occurs on May 19th at the Annenberg Center.

NOTE: longtime, observant fans will note that a heavily fictionalized version of this experienced appeared in part of my short story "When You Know You're From Somewhere Else" in StoryQuarterly back in 2009

Springsteen, Women, and why artists are always looking in from outside

Here's a blog post responding to a blog post about a blog post. I love the internet!

Monica D'Antonio over at X Rated has an excellent essay about Bruce Springsteen's song presentations of men and women. Read it as well as the original article by Rebecca Bohanan ("The Only Three Women in Bruce Springsteen's Music"), which sparked Monica's analytical fury.

Then, because you have an hour of your life reading 3 articles about Bruce Springsteen, consider my additional thoughts here (with very inadequate summaries of Bohanan and D'Antonio):

Rebecca Bohanan acknowledges that Springsteen's a man and is thus entitled to write about men; but she accuses him of stereotyping females as saviors, objects, and/or goals. She cites lyrics (many of which are from 70s/early80s). She says she's a huge fan of his music, but that he's writing about a male type that's 50-60 outdated; and his women are barely present.

Monica's analysis (why didn't you read it, fool?) does an excellent job of citing lyrics to contend that Springsteen has plenty of male-female relationships that are about friendship; she also points out that the damaged men are often unhappy regardless of what the women do, which I'd like to expand upon a bit.

With music and poetry, people often fall into the trap of equating narrators with the authors. Some singers/poets invite that merging; others exploit that mistake.

I contend that Springsteen is not even writing from HIS perspective in most of his songs (especially once he achieves commercial success -- you think he's really knocking girls up, robbing banks, working at factories, etc after BORN IN THE USA?)

I reiterate, first, that the artist always views the world from the outside. Thus, they are from the world but disconnected. That disconnection comes before the artwork can flourish. The art is as much an escape as getting into a car and driving to a new town (and then writing songs about the old town). But there is a difference between the man who yearns of a chance to drive away from his burdens and sadness and the artist, who truly escapes but still suffers -- as the Marxists of the Harlem Renaissance learned, the working class doesn't have time to write stories and poems and songs about their own plight if they are working 12 hours a day. The artist is privileged in that they have opportunity to create, power to create, or the will to sacrifice time to create. This does not make the artist a better human being than a man or woman who works, raises kids, etc; this simply makes the artist an artist. The artist chooses the nontraditional path -- the chance to communicate something, but still suffer.

Remember: the artist is always outside looking in.

Springsteen, an artist writing from the outside of a world he knew first hand, is writing about a perspective that still exists, despite what Bohanan wants to admit. The alienated male stuck in ideas/communities does seem socially and politically 50-60 years out of date, but one cannot wish it away. It still exists. Nor can you fault the artist for shining light on it, unless they seem to be celebrating the suffering or championing the old ideas. Springsteen is not championing the class struggles of the men he sings about; at worst he's not writing songs about the class struggles of women. But is that really worth criticizing him for? (Consider: would he be able to satisfyingly represent the female perspective? maybe. Or, more interestingly, would Bohanan critique a singer who sings about the pain of racial divides? Even better, why isn't she critiquing Bruce for focusing on white men?)

According to Bohanan, these songs miss the opportunity to champion her ideology that men and women can achieve both happiness and equal power in relationships. I happen to agree with that ideology. But -- and this is what irritates me about her article -- not all men and women think that way! Springsteen is singing about the men that don't think that way; or, more accurately, he's singing about the men who are discovering that they don't think that way, but don't know how else to act!

Springsteen sings about these men and women and, while he champions their ability to survive, he never cheers the culture that allows their situations to exist! (As Monica points out, Springsteen doesn't seem to think their outdated/traditional perspectives will lead to any type of happiness.) It's a career-spanning critique: the struggle of men raised to accept traditional gender roles, struggling in near poverty (and worse). And maybe he's a Romantic, but Springsteen seems to think that Love (yes, with a capital L) still exists and can make the pain bearable.

It's here that I'm reminded of a quote from James Baldwin's story "Sonny's Blues," where the narrator confronts his brother Sonny about his (Sonny's) heroin addiction. They begin to talk about what's really important to them -- the nature of surviving in post-War Harlem when drugs and music offer a way out for guys like Sonny who cannot achieve middle class success/happiness.

"But there's no way NOT to suffer, is there Sonny?"
[...]
"No. There's no way not to suffer. But you try all kinds of ways to keep from drowning in it, to keep on top of it, and to make it seem--well, like you. Like you did something, all right, and now you're suffering for it. [...N]obody just takes it!"

Springsteen's men use love the same way Sonny uses jazz and heroin -- they still suffer, but they feel like they're doing something if they don't suffer alone. In the climax of James Baldwin's classic story, the narrator watches his sober brother play piano with 2 of his friends and the connection amongst the musicians is foreign (to the narrator) but beautiful. It's the thing that will keep Sonny alive, even if he suffers. Springsteen is talking about the same thing, as far as I'm concerned. Love, even if it can't cure suffering, makes suffering bearable. Love makes the working class man, who's brought up with the traditional male gender role of silent suffering provider, feel less alone.

Bohanan basically comes across as an elitist citing sexism when she misses that Springsteen is a class critic.

Does Springsteen focus on the way class destroys men more than women? Yes. Are there female artists who focus on the way class destroys women? Yes. Do we need one artist to do both? No. Bohanan would have done better to find the complimentary artist that highlights the struggle of working class women, instead of blaming Springsteen for doing something he clearly hasn't been trying to do!