1) I managed to catch Last Night this weekend. Someone told me it was akin to Patrick Marber's screenplay of Closer. The real reason why I PVR-ed it however was Guillaume Canet whom I'd never seen in an English-speaking role before and, as a result, was curious to see as I generally enjoy his work. The narrative is predictable but there are interesting achievements of form in this film. Cinematically, it does well, too. While the characters and plot, for the most part, are predictably forgettable, the form and soundtrack beg for some attention.
2) Portlandia stars interview each other.
My favorite episode of the first season had to be the pilot.
3) There is a new study on the familial linkage between neuropsychiatric conditions and intellectual interests. You can read the article in full here. A bit says:
"Students aspiring to technical majors (science/mathematics/engineering) were more likely than other students to report a sibling with an autism spectrum disorder (p = 0.037). Conversely, students interested in the humanities were more likely to report a family member with major depressive disorder (p = 8.8×10−4), bipolar disorder (p = 0.027), or substance abuse problems (p = 1.9×10−6). A combined PREdisposition for Subject MattEr (PRESUME) score based on these disorders was strongly predictive of subject matter interests (p = 9.6×10−8)."
4) Where was the web invented? Well, Al Gore might give one answer. Other sources have other answers. Tip of the hat to Tyler Cowen for the pointer.
A bit says:
"I’ll bet if you asked every French politician where the web was invented not a single one would know this. The Franco-Swiss border runs through the CERN campus and building 31 is literally just a few feet into France. However, there is no explicit border within CERN and the main entrance is in Switzerland, so the situation of which country it was invented in is actually quite a tricky one. The current commemorative plaque, which is outside a row of offices where people other than Tim Berners-Lee worked on the web, is in Switzerland. To add to the confusion, in case Tim thought of the web at home, his home was in France but he temporarily moved to rented accommodation in Switzerland, just around the time the web was developed. So although, strictly speaking, France is the birthplace of the web it would be fair to say that it happened in building 31 at CERN but not in any particular country! How delightfully appropriate for an invention which breaks down physical borders."
Sunday, January 29, 2012
Saturday, January 28, 2012
Doubt Is the Origin of Wisdom
Or as Descartes put it in his Meditations on First Philosophy, "Dubium sapientiae initium." The gift of doubt is something evolution rarely gets much public laud for. And doubt makes the most sense when seen in conjunction with others. Consider it in isolation, and little progress will be made.
Companionship is not always a matter of desire. It's, for most, and fundamentally, a matter of need. Of survival, really. We don't refer to it as such in public discourse because it becomes too heavy and who would want to tackle things of seriousness in broad daylight?!
Any discussion of the economics of companionship in the public forum is, at best, pushed to the side and given commercial-length attention. People have no choice when it comes to allying themselves with others. From an evolutionary perspective, there's power in numbers. Survival is found in numbers. Two or more people have a better chance when it comes to outsmarting and or vanquishing a hungry bear than one isolated person. In nuce, the bigger the pack, the better the chances of making it.
Enculturation brought with it more than just better stratagem so that better game could be caught, bigger cavernous spaces in which to prepare said game, draw such activities on the amorphous walls to record the culture of survival, and secure protection from the elements of the physical world. Enculturation brought to life the results of systematic sociality: spawn, a lot of spawn - in case bears and physical elements got to most of them - and a desire to create a narrative of living, one that is historical, that builds on previous accounts and doesn't stop at a dénouement. One that, phoenix-like, gives birth to yet another version of itself ad perpetua.
Survival, or efforts to survive, lead one to a better existence. Efforts to survive give one better tools of coping. I've long maintained this. Some humans are better at living because they're naturally good at surviving. Genetic makeup dictates many of the living choices we all irrespective of one another make. But so does sociality. While the former is devoid of choice, the latter is fully predicated on it.
From a Darwinian perspective, what makes one fitter to survive than others is their ability to decode their surroundings and make decisions that are congruent with nature. Which path to take to encounter the least amount of bears, what time of the year to go hunting, who has the kind of childbearing hips that can sustain the highest frequency of births, who to strike alliances with for the purpose of attaining the most game and the most fruitful childbearing hips, et al.
Descartes noted in his Principia philosophiae, Part I the following: "Ex nihilo nihil fit. Meaning: nothing comes out of nothing. Understanding that plurality counts, counts. A multitude of human resources will never be inconsequential to existence, good existence. It will be indispensable to good living. In sum, we don't choose to align ourselves with others out of fickleness. Most humans do so out of clean calculation. Nothing comes out of nothing. Much comes out of calculated sociality and sustained companionship.
So, next time when dinner is prepared in the kitchen, dry-cleaning is picked up, and one is accompanied to the doctor's office, think of sociality is its purely pragmatic, evolution-informed form: that it is commoditized and not the romanticized entity we're daily told it is. There's always a cui bono - i.e.: 'what's in it for me?' - attached to it. Even a simple peanut butter & jelly sandwich brings expectations with it.
Cogito ergo sum, Des
The picture below was taken at the airport on one of my summer trips while waiting to board the plane. The parental time spent made sense: when bored, do yoga publicly.
Companionship is not always a matter of desire. It's, for most, and fundamentally, a matter of need. Of survival, really. We don't refer to it as such in public discourse because it becomes too heavy and who would want to tackle things of seriousness in broad daylight?!
Any discussion of the economics of companionship in the public forum is, at best, pushed to the side and given commercial-length attention. People have no choice when it comes to allying themselves with others. From an evolutionary perspective, there's power in numbers. Survival is found in numbers. Two or more people have a better chance when it comes to outsmarting and or vanquishing a hungry bear than one isolated person. In nuce, the bigger the pack, the better the chances of making it.
Enculturation brought with it more than just better stratagem so that better game could be caught, bigger cavernous spaces in which to prepare said game, draw such activities on the amorphous walls to record the culture of survival, and secure protection from the elements of the physical world. Enculturation brought to life the results of systematic sociality: spawn, a lot of spawn - in case bears and physical elements got to most of them - and a desire to create a narrative of living, one that is historical, that builds on previous accounts and doesn't stop at a dénouement. One that, phoenix-like, gives birth to yet another version of itself ad perpetua.
Survival, or efforts to survive, lead one to a better existence. Efforts to survive give one better tools of coping. I've long maintained this. Some humans are better at living because they're naturally good at surviving. Genetic makeup dictates many of the living choices we all irrespective of one another make. But so does sociality. While the former is devoid of choice, the latter is fully predicated on it.
From a Darwinian perspective, what makes one fitter to survive than others is their ability to decode their surroundings and make decisions that are congruent with nature. Which path to take to encounter the least amount of bears, what time of the year to go hunting, who has the kind of childbearing hips that can sustain the highest frequency of births, who to strike alliances with for the purpose of attaining the most game and the most fruitful childbearing hips, et al.
Descartes noted in his Principia philosophiae, Part I the following: "Ex nihilo nihil fit. Meaning: nothing comes out of nothing. Understanding that plurality counts, counts. A multitude of human resources will never be inconsequential to existence, good existence. It will be indispensable to good living. In sum, we don't choose to align ourselves with others out of fickleness. Most humans do so out of clean calculation. Nothing comes out of nothing. Much comes out of calculated sociality and sustained companionship.
So, next time when dinner is prepared in the kitchen, dry-cleaning is picked up, and one is accompanied to the doctor's office, think of sociality is its purely pragmatic, evolution-informed form: that it is commoditized and not the romanticized entity we're daily told it is. There's always a cui bono - i.e.: 'what's in it for me?' - attached to it. Even a simple peanut butter & jelly sandwich brings expectations with it.
Cogito ergo sum, Des
The picture below was taken at the airport on one of my summer trips while waiting to board the plane. The parental time spent made sense: when bored, do yoga publicly.
Friday, January 27, 2012
Egocentrism over Email
I just finished reading a study published by the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology about the benefit of factoring in paralinguistic cues such as gesture, emphasis, and intonation and how without them it can be difficult to convey emotion and tone over email.
Email communication is ubiquitous. Businesses rely almost solely on it. Interpersonal relationships can't seem to be without it. However, communication is multi-faceted and without paralinguistic feedback it can be quite lacking.
I had an experience with a work email the other day. As a trained close reader, tone matters to me. I pictured what the writer of the email meant by it if the same content were shared by way of the voice while being physically present. I still didn't quite feel I got to the core of the text.
I was in too tired a state of mind to place a phone call. Instead, I choose to give it a few hours, wrap up some last-minute things, tidy the desk, put things away, and then I compile the text. It was an exercise in economy of speech. And as most such exercises go, they take time.
Afterwards, a number of phone calls ensued for the purpose of getting to a full understanding of the content and what now feels like a waste of 60 minutes of my time. In the end, the original writer of the email concluded, incidentally by way of email, "so glad this is all sorted out. sorry :)" I wanted to email back the following, "it wouldn't have even been born had one of us verbally phrased the same thing." But I didn't. Because I was in no mood to waste yet another hour of my already packed existence.
A bit from the study says:
"Five experiments suggest that this limitation is often underappreciated, such that people tend to believe that they can communicate over e-mail more effectively than they actually can. Studies 4 and 5 further suggest that this overconfidence is born of egocentrism, the inherent difficulty of detaching oneself from one’s own perspective when evaluating the perspective of someone else. Because e-mail communicators “hear” a statement differently depending on whether they intend to be, say, sarcastic or funny, it can be difficult to appreciate that their electronic audience may not.
Social judgment is inherently egocentric. When people try to imagine the perspective, thoughts, or feelings of someone else, a growing body of evidence suggests that they use themselves as an
anchor or reference point. Although precisely why this occurs — whether the result of an overlearned and generally valid heuristic, the residual byproduct of an earlier stage of childhood egocentrism, or the inevitable consequence of an effortful cognitive process such as anchoring and adjustment—is a matter of some debate, the fact remains that the assessment of another’s perspectives is influenced, at least in part, by one’s own."
You can read the rest of the study here.
Email communication is ubiquitous. Businesses rely almost solely on it. Interpersonal relationships can't seem to be without it. However, communication is multi-faceted and without paralinguistic feedback it can be quite lacking.
I had an experience with a work email the other day. As a trained close reader, tone matters to me. I pictured what the writer of the email meant by it if the same content were shared by way of the voice while being physically present. I still didn't quite feel I got to the core of the text.
I was in too tired a state of mind to place a phone call. Instead, I choose to give it a few hours, wrap up some last-minute things, tidy the desk, put things away, and then I compile the text. It was an exercise in economy of speech. And as most such exercises go, they take time.
Afterwards, a number of phone calls ensued for the purpose of getting to a full understanding of the content and what now feels like a waste of 60 minutes of my time. In the end, the original writer of the email concluded, incidentally by way of email, "so glad this is all sorted out. sorry :)" I wanted to email back the following, "it wouldn't have even been born had one of us verbally phrased the same thing." But I didn't. Because I was in no mood to waste yet another hour of my already packed existence.
A bit from the study says:
"Five experiments suggest that this limitation is often underappreciated, such that people tend to believe that they can communicate over e-mail more effectively than they actually can. Studies 4 and 5 further suggest that this overconfidence is born of egocentrism, the inherent difficulty of detaching oneself from one’s own perspective when evaluating the perspective of someone else. Because e-mail communicators “hear” a statement differently depending on whether they intend to be, say, sarcastic or funny, it can be difficult to appreciate that their electronic audience may not.
Social judgment is inherently egocentric. When people try to imagine the perspective, thoughts, or feelings of someone else, a growing body of evidence suggests that they use themselves as an
anchor or reference point. Although precisely why this occurs — whether the result of an overlearned and generally valid heuristic, the residual byproduct of an earlier stage of childhood egocentrism, or the inevitable consequence of an effortful cognitive process such as anchoring and adjustment—is a matter of some debate, the fact remains that the assessment of another’s perspectives is influenced, at least in part, by one’s own."
You can read the rest of the study here.
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
Claims re: the Alpha Male Myth et al.
I just read the following. The first one is a repudiation of the notion of alpha masculinity and how pop culture notions are utterly in the wrong when faced with fundamental evolutionary biology. An interesting read. A bit of the study says:
"If evolved human dominance behaviors have been decreasing over time, we would expect to see something else evolve to replace it. Because of the evolution of hominin brain size and cognition across the paleolithic, we might expect that whatever trait evolved via sexual selection related to these developments. Indeed, humor and intelligence appear to be more attractive to women than testosterone-related masculinity when it matters most — during female ovulation (Kaufman, et al. 2007)." More here.
Francesco Schettino is a worldwide known name now. The captain who abandoned ship to save himself has become the laughing stock of the reading world. The Guardian's Ian Jack, however, explores what his premature leaving of the ship might entail and how it relates to our collective attitudes about honor. A bit says:
"...[h]is transgression is enormous. The rule that a captain must be the last man (or woman) to leave a ship in difficulties is never written down, but everywhere understood. In the words of a former P&O captain: "At sea, you have a great sense of responsibility for the people who are beneath you – it's moral as well as legal. You need to stay as long as anyone else remains."
In this altruistic sense, the mystique of captaincy has survived into its third century. Sentiment, if not always practicality, will ensure it continues. For who can resist the gallantry of David Hart Dyke staying aboard the tilting hull of HMS Coventry, or Noel Coward and what remains of his crew clinging to their life-raft in In Which We Serve, and Coward commanding, as his destroyer finally goes down: "Three cheers for the ship!" More here.
"If evolved human dominance behaviors have been decreasing over time, we would expect to see something else evolve to replace it. Because of the evolution of hominin brain size and cognition across the paleolithic, we might expect that whatever trait evolved via sexual selection related to these developments. Indeed, humor and intelligence appear to be more attractive to women than testosterone-related masculinity when it matters most — during female ovulation (Kaufman, et al. 2007)." More here.
Francesco Schettino is a worldwide known name now. The captain who abandoned ship to save himself has become the laughing stock of the reading world. The Guardian's Ian Jack, however, explores what his premature leaving of the ship might entail and how it relates to our collective attitudes about honor. A bit says:
"...[h]is transgression is enormous. The rule that a captain must be the last man (or woman) to leave a ship in difficulties is never written down, but everywhere understood. In the words of a former P&O captain: "At sea, you have a great sense of responsibility for the people who are beneath you – it's moral as well as legal. You need to stay as long as anyone else remains."
In this altruistic sense, the mystique of captaincy has survived into its third century. Sentiment, if not always practicality, will ensure it continues. For who can resist the gallantry of David Hart Dyke staying aboard the tilting hull of HMS Coventry, or Noel Coward and what remains of his crew clinging to their life-raft in In Which We Serve, and Coward commanding, as his destroyer finally goes down: "Three cheers for the ship!" More here.
Having Preferences Means Having Weaknesses.
Preferences allow us to carve a space for actualization. We cannot self-actualize without a set of personal preferences for they lead to pursuits. Pursuits, of any kind, are fueled by interests and interests or drive as some would say, are indispensable when it comes to accruing any sort of success. However, preferences reside in a space of exclusion. Having them means shutting doors to other things for preferring one particular thing presupposes a presence of preclusion.
I've been thinking a good deal about the role preferences play when pursuing anything. I've thought about the role choice plays in preference pursuing. Deny the self of a preference, and most pursuits become lukewarm. And achievement is rarely to be found in the lukewarm.
Just as I was thinking about the philosophical nuances of preferences, I had a desire to play a good game of chess. Funny that. I hadn't played in a few months. I call the one person in the city who usually gives me a good game of chess. He was surprised at my call as last time we got together for chess I told him that I wasn't all that interested in carrying on with our chess encounters for a while.
I'm the kind that needs time to warm up to something. I usually warm up to an idea, a person, or a general pursuit by thinking and reading about it. So, I start doing something exciting like reading up on chess news. It's exciting to me. Sort of like writing about 12-century egocentric heroes. We all have a kind of cake we like better than others. Choice has little say in preferences. If it did, impulse would play no role whatsoever in human pursuits. Think of the last thing you pursued with systematic interest and explore how big a role impulse played. I'd wager, a good deal. But I digress.
So I get on ChessBase.com to see what's up in the world of chess. While there I come upon an interview with the renowned chess player, Magnus Carlsen. Reading the interview got my juices flowing. I let out a few 'ha'-s and 'good one'-s as I was doing do. A bit from the interview says:
So you can’t call yourself a tactician or a strategist?
-I’d call myself an optimist! In actual fact I don’t have any clear preferences in chess. I do what I think circumstances require of me – I attack, defend or go into the endgame. Having preferences means having weaknesses.
Could you compare your impressions after a win in a subtle endgame or a whirlwind attack? Do they really not differ at all for you?!
-I really don’t know what I like more in chess! Among other things a game can stand out for the feeling you get when it’s over, when you realise you’ve created something truly worthwhile… But something like that happens very, very rarely. In any case, over the whole course of my life – only a few times.
Well, and if you’re just a spectator, which kind of game do you like more?
-I don’t know. I like the struggle in itself.
You can read the rest of the interview here.
I found it quite interesting that Carlsen would comment on what role preferences played in his activity of choice. In my opinion, however, whether it's chess or cheese-making, preferences matter. It's whether one's got a good poker face going in that truly counts when it comes to the end result. We all have preferences. It's how much/little we show them that matters.
And I'm all warmed up now.
I've removed all the specks of dust from my chess set and in about 5 minutes, my bell will ring. And so it does. My friend has a preference for punctuality. And he makes no fuss about obfuscating it. If he's this open when we play, I'm bound to win, aren't I?
We'll see.
Friday, January 20, 2012
Tuesday, January 10, 2012
Steve McQueen's Shame: A Review
I saw Shame today. I like Michael Fassbender in most the films he's done with one exception: Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds.
I generally tend to not judge accents as I'm a veritable soup of idiolects myself. However, Fassbender's accent in Inglourious Basterds is the stuff of headaches. But back to the Steve McQueen's Shame.
I like Fassbender's work a good deal. There's a certain gravitas he projects that few actors have the ability to carry. Born in Germany and raised in Ireland, he's a picture of cultural and linguistic diversity which is perhaps the reason why he appears to effortlessly play anything from a New Yorker to an aristocrat a-la-Jane-Eyre, or an X-Men-er.
The premise of Shame is the 'text' of shame and how it is engendered within a Judeo-Christian framework regardless of how far from prescribed religiosity it finds itself. I found the form of the film beautifully mimetic of a religious ritual. One good decision McQueen made is to go for Fassbender. It takes courage to take on certain roles and I most definitely don't see a Brad Pitt or a Clooney doing the same thing. Ok, maybe Colin Farrell or Jared Leto who by the way came to a mind a lot when viewing this film. Think, Requiem for a Dream, perhaps.
Most critics regard the film to be an examination of modern/urban sociality and how much the contemporary person wants to be tethered to others even though a good deal of current life seems to be about heightened individuality and insularity. McQueen's cinematic strength is not content, however. As a matter of fact, it rarely is. One thing he seems to do well, however, is explore the substance of form. The shots are clean, fast but not furious. McQueen's choices made me think of Doug Liman's portraiture styles. The camera rests on the characters just long enough till it gets moving again to the next point in the plot. Incidentally, this is how the film manages to deviate dullness. Aesthetically, this film is rich. Some of the city shots were also reminiscent of Nicolas Winding Refn's film Drive.
The past few years, at least since the actual boom of web 2.0, there seems to be little, if any, change in aesthetics. Incidentally, Vanity Fair's Kurt Andersen has a new article out on the question whether we as a culture are stagnating aesthetically. I thought of it while watching the film, actually. You can read it here.
I suppose it makes sense that form remains the one last frontier that's resisting change as all else around it has been changing mercilessly. Think technology. Hanging on to one thing seems to be the one crutch one needs to cope with the novelty and unpredictability of everything. Or is it? This seems to be the question that Brandon, the main character, tries to answer and eventually reject. Much in life seems to come easily to him. Much but not everything. He seems to bridle all else but basic urges about things he deems utterly trivial in broad daylight and when in the company of full lucidity.
Brandon seems to have it all on the surface. He's well employed, is generally well liked, at least on the surface, and seems to be governed by self-discipline. Only, he doesn't seem to do so as well as he appears.
He appears to want to connect to the world but the world seems to move simply too fast for him. His attachments are flimsy and most of the people he meets are forgettable. There seems to be a crisis of supply and demand when it comes to meaningful human connectivity. Brandon wants the opposite of what he has but the urban survival camp doesn't seem to be capable of providing it. He desperately wants the opposite of what he can get and every time he tries to leave his patterns of living, he falls right back into the known regardless of how much it is mired in dysfunction. Every night he goes after a new pursuit so that the next morning he can go back to all he knows.
Carey Mulligan plays his sister. I have only liked her in one film, An Education. All the other films that have ensued are nothing more than an imitation of her debut film. But then again, it would be hard to compliment a character who needs little support. Fassbender is no Pitt. He needs little support from other characters. A better script would have helped, no doubt.
Jessica Chastain is good in this. Very good. She's another example of an underrated performer often stuck in incoherent filmic choices, think the widely overrated The Help.
In sum, I enjoyed seeing Fassbender and I enjoyed the cinematography of Shame. What I didn't enjoy is McQueen's verbose effort to school the audience on addiction. His effort was, at best, sophomoric. His director of photography, however gets an A. Fassbender gets a solid A- but only because there's only that much he can do given the script.
In Shame, he is close to aces.
This film won't make you want to go back and brush up on your Descartes. Or perhaps Kant. It might just make you want to watch a bit of Kubrick and perhaps get a bit melancholy that he's been gone for a bit over a decade now.
I generally tend to not judge accents as I'm a veritable soup of idiolects myself. However, Fassbender's accent in Inglourious Basterds is the stuff of headaches. But back to the Steve McQueen's Shame.
I like Fassbender's work a good deal. There's a certain gravitas he projects that few actors have the ability to carry. Born in Germany and raised in Ireland, he's a picture of cultural and linguistic diversity which is perhaps the reason why he appears to effortlessly play anything from a New Yorker to an aristocrat a-la-Jane-Eyre, or an X-Men-er.
The premise of Shame is the 'text' of shame and how it is engendered within a Judeo-Christian framework regardless of how far from prescribed religiosity it finds itself. I found the form of the film beautifully mimetic of a religious ritual. One good decision McQueen made is to go for Fassbender. It takes courage to take on certain roles and I most definitely don't see a Brad Pitt or a Clooney doing the same thing. Ok, maybe Colin Farrell or Jared Leto who by the way came to a mind a lot when viewing this film. Think, Requiem for a Dream, perhaps.
Most critics regard the film to be an examination of modern/urban sociality and how much the contemporary person wants to be tethered to others even though a good deal of current life seems to be about heightened individuality and insularity. McQueen's cinematic strength is not content, however. As a matter of fact, it rarely is. One thing he seems to do well, however, is explore the substance of form. The shots are clean, fast but not furious. McQueen's choices made me think of Doug Liman's portraiture styles. The camera rests on the characters just long enough till it gets moving again to the next point in the plot. Incidentally, this is how the film manages to deviate dullness. Aesthetically, this film is rich. Some of the city shots were also reminiscent of Nicolas Winding Refn's film Drive.
The past few years, at least since the actual boom of web 2.0, there seems to be little, if any, change in aesthetics. Incidentally, Vanity Fair's Kurt Andersen has a new article out on the question whether we as a culture are stagnating aesthetically. I thought of it while watching the film, actually. You can read it here.
I suppose it makes sense that form remains the one last frontier that's resisting change as all else around it has been changing mercilessly. Think technology. Hanging on to one thing seems to be the one crutch one needs to cope with the novelty and unpredictability of everything. Or is it? This seems to be the question that Brandon, the main character, tries to answer and eventually reject. Much in life seems to come easily to him. Much but not everything. He seems to bridle all else but basic urges about things he deems utterly trivial in broad daylight and when in the company of full lucidity.
Brandon seems to have it all on the surface. He's well employed, is generally well liked, at least on the surface, and seems to be governed by self-discipline. Only, he doesn't seem to do so as well as he appears.
He appears to want to connect to the world but the world seems to move simply too fast for him. His attachments are flimsy and most of the people he meets are forgettable. There seems to be a crisis of supply and demand when it comes to meaningful human connectivity. Brandon wants the opposite of what he has but the urban survival camp doesn't seem to be capable of providing it. He desperately wants the opposite of what he can get and every time he tries to leave his patterns of living, he falls right back into the known regardless of how much it is mired in dysfunction. Every night he goes after a new pursuit so that the next morning he can go back to all he knows.
Carey Mulligan plays his sister. I have only liked her in one film, An Education. All the other films that have ensued are nothing more than an imitation of her debut film. But then again, it would be hard to compliment a character who needs little support. Fassbender is no Pitt. He needs little support from other characters. A better script would have helped, no doubt.
Jessica Chastain is good in this. Very good. She's another example of an underrated performer often stuck in incoherent filmic choices, think the widely overrated The Help.
In sum, I enjoyed seeing Fassbender and I enjoyed the cinematography of Shame. What I didn't enjoy is McQueen's verbose effort to school the audience on addiction. His effort was, at best, sophomoric. His director of photography, however gets an A. Fassbender gets a solid A- but only because there's only that much he can do given the script.
In Shame, he is close to aces.
This film won't make you want to go back and brush up on your Descartes. Or perhaps Kant. It might just make you want to watch a bit of Kubrick and perhaps get a bit melancholy that he's been gone for a bit over a decade now.
Tuesday, December 27, 2011
Happiness and Excoriating
"I've got to tell you something and I know you'll excoriate me," says he as I drive through the rainy streets of the city thinking of ways to improve two things I'm currently struggling with. Driving, like working out, is a good way to clear my head. Another way is going down by the beach, sitting on my favorite bench that's usually unoccupied around 9pm and between 7am-8:30am.
"What makes you think I'll excoriate you?" I say to him as I make a right turn.
"Because I know you. Plus, I know I'm in need of being excoriated." he adds. Usually, I would have interjected one of my usual one-liners known only to those who know my discursive routines. Instead, I say nothing. I'm in too involved a mood. My mind's busy. I say nothing and almost enjoy the silence for a bit.
"I might have something you'll excoriate me about, too", I finally say, "but let me hear yours first."
He proceeds to tell me the details and I ask him if he needs to hear from me the same thing I've told him a number of times in the past. He says he does. He feels like a review. "I feel like a good review," he says. Thus, we review.
I've thought a lot about happiness recently and how it relates to micro and macro sociality. Blame it on the rain, I suppose. It does have a tendency to lead to written fecundity. Writing pours out of me when it rains. Incidentally, I just finished a draft I'm submitting in two weeks. But back to the happiness thing.
Happiness cannot happen without self-examination. This is not some adage I had to think long and hard about. This is what the Western canon has taught me since early childhood. Start way South with Sophocles, move on a bit North to Plautus, pick up a bit of Dante in the neck of Florence, head North and West to Shakespeare, head back South and pick up some Goethe and, while you're at it, swing by France and have a sip of existentialism and what you'll end up gleaning is the following: Happiness cannot happen without self-examination. We cannot know the other, without knowing the self. Nobody can tell us what feels good to us, unless we experience it ourselves. I love the smell of pines. Absolutely, love it. It drives me insane with happiness. I discovered it when I was fourteen, right after learning how to dance with a tall boy with whose family we were vacationing and who was a horribly bad badminton partner. Happiness needs context in order to get registered. It needs a vehicle of narration. Without storytelling ability, it cannot be.
And it most certainly cannot happen without a clear grasp of history, one's own history. There's a better chance to face what's around the corner when you know and understand the corners you've left behind. And living because one can is no answer to existence. While existence might be nothing more than a string of coincidences, what our canon teaches us is that collectively we feel better about our individual and collective experience in life when we view it in connection to something larger than ourselves, like a bigger group of people, or a larger cluster of interests.
One of the first Shakespeare bits I memorized as a teen was a Hamlet soliloqui. I mostly saw Hamlet as a spoiled brat, not that different from other spoiled brats I knew growing up. And yet, I was in love with his eloquence. He was a brat who had a way with language. I've never been able to resist this kind, the kind that has a way with language. And my history will back this up.
"What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how
infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and
admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like
a god! the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals—and yet,
to me, what is this quintessence of dust?"
I always found it curious that while most people responded to the first verses, I was always keener on the "quintessence of dust" part. For some reason, I mostly use this phrase when break into German. I really don't know why. Translating Shakespeare into German is almost as sacreligeous as translating Goethe into English. My German counterparts often say, "Was ist denn mit der Quintessenz?!" Essence is fine enough a word, no? I wanted to say Quintessenz on Saturday. I didn't. I remember the context well. I was simply too tired to use it as using it would invite even more questions as to why my speech is often peppered with uncommon words.
The reason why I always respond to the "quintessence of dust" bit of the soliloqui is because it encapsulates the notion of life and human existence most fundamentally. And yet, it's poetic. It's association with nothingness is poetic. While our entire literary canon suggests than meaning resides in tropes, sometimes it feels better to embrace the simplicity of experience for what it is, a speck in time, a cluster of little somethings, some of which are good and others the stuff of anxiety, which inevitably make up one big trace.
The thing is, happiness is about shared experience. We need canon to live well. We can easily survive without a historical blueprint of existence. Animals do it. But to live and to want to live well, a script is needed, a well written one. One that says that happiness is our duty and that to go after it is somehow lofty a pursuit, noble even. We spend our lives going after goals, hard ones, to reach a level of happiness much of which seems to be rooted in status and accomplishment.
Without connectivity, we have no context, no history and few things taste better to one than being known, resisted, and eventually agreed with. Happiness is having someone who truly knows you and whom you truly know say to you that they've said or done something you'd excoriate them about. Bottom line, they know how you'll react and they know they'll feel better after sharing with you their short narrative. And while you've read their script over and over again you somehow feel good that they feel you know how to read them and, like a forgiving teacher, you'll excoriate them briefly but then you'll write little notes on the margins of their essay and they'll know how to get better and do right by you.
Familiarity gives me comfort because familiarity gives us all comfort. Humans like routine. It's
due to our enculturation. We have no say in the matter. It's like saying we like how water tastes after being deprived of it. Another synonym for familiarity is intimacy and intimacy is harder for some for it resides in the territory of vulnerability where impulse and unhoned instinct doesn't do very well and where damage can easily be dished out. Giving intimacy means getting known and there is no ouvre bigger and more significant than that. C.S. Lewis wrote that we "read to know we are not alone."
Those who say they can do without familiarity have never had the courage to acquire it, they're strangers to it. And one could never rely on someone who refuses familiarity because to refuse it means to refuse a shared history, connectivity. And while contentedness can happen free of context, happiness needs more, at the very least, it needs a semblance of importance. The feeling of sucking on frozen grapes makes some, including me, feel content. Wearing silk panty hose with a form-fitting black dress hand-made in Berlin in the early 90's while wearing high-heeled boots as I meet someone for dinner makes me feel good. I do it when I feel like my inner self needs excoriating so that it can get to feeling better.
"What makes you think I'll excoriate you?" I say to him as I make a right turn.
"Because I know you. Plus, I know I'm in need of being excoriated." he adds. Usually, I would have interjected one of my usual one-liners known only to those who know my discursive routines. Instead, I say nothing. I'm in too involved a mood. My mind's busy. I say nothing and almost enjoy the silence for a bit.
"I might have something you'll excoriate me about, too", I finally say, "but let me hear yours first."
He proceeds to tell me the details and I ask him if he needs to hear from me the same thing I've told him a number of times in the past. He says he does. He feels like a review. "I feel like a good review," he says. Thus, we review.
I've thought a lot about happiness recently and how it relates to micro and macro sociality. Blame it on the rain, I suppose. It does have a tendency to lead to written fecundity. Writing pours out of me when it rains. Incidentally, I just finished a draft I'm submitting in two weeks. But back to the happiness thing.
Happiness cannot happen without self-examination. This is not some adage I had to think long and hard about. This is what the Western canon has taught me since early childhood. Start way South with Sophocles, move on a bit North to Plautus, pick up a bit of Dante in the neck of Florence, head North and West to Shakespeare, head back South and pick up some Goethe and, while you're at it, swing by France and have a sip of existentialism and what you'll end up gleaning is the following: Happiness cannot happen without self-examination. We cannot know the other, without knowing the self. Nobody can tell us what feels good to us, unless we experience it ourselves. I love the smell of pines. Absolutely, love it. It drives me insane with happiness. I discovered it when I was fourteen, right after learning how to dance with a tall boy with whose family we were vacationing and who was a horribly bad badminton partner. Happiness needs context in order to get registered. It needs a vehicle of narration. Without storytelling ability, it cannot be.
And it most certainly cannot happen without a clear grasp of history, one's own history. There's a better chance to face what's around the corner when you know and understand the corners you've left behind. And living because one can is no answer to existence. While existence might be nothing more than a string of coincidences, what our canon teaches us is that collectively we feel better about our individual and collective experience in life when we view it in connection to something larger than ourselves, like a bigger group of people, or a larger cluster of interests.
One of the first Shakespeare bits I memorized as a teen was a Hamlet soliloqui. I mostly saw Hamlet as a spoiled brat, not that different from other spoiled brats I knew growing up. And yet, I was in love with his eloquence. He was a brat who had a way with language. I've never been able to resist this kind, the kind that has a way with language. And my history will back this up.
"What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how
infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and
admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like
a god! the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals—and yet,
to me, what is this quintessence of dust?"
I always found it curious that while most people responded to the first verses, I was always keener on the "quintessence of dust" part. For some reason, I mostly use this phrase when break into German. I really don't know why. Translating Shakespeare into German is almost as sacreligeous as translating Goethe into English. My German counterparts often say, "Was ist denn mit der Quintessenz?!" Essence is fine enough a word, no? I wanted to say Quintessenz on Saturday. I didn't. I remember the context well. I was simply too tired to use it as using it would invite even more questions as to why my speech is often peppered with uncommon words.
The reason why I always respond to the "quintessence of dust" bit of the soliloqui is because it encapsulates the notion of life and human existence most fundamentally. And yet, it's poetic. It's association with nothingness is poetic. While our entire literary canon suggests than meaning resides in tropes, sometimes it feels better to embrace the simplicity of experience for what it is, a speck in time, a cluster of little somethings, some of which are good and others the stuff of anxiety, which inevitably make up one big trace.
The thing is, happiness is about shared experience. We need canon to live well. We can easily survive without a historical blueprint of existence. Animals do it. But to live and to want to live well, a script is needed, a well written one. One that says that happiness is our duty and that to go after it is somehow lofty a pursuit, noble even. We spend our lives going after goals, hard ones, to reach a level of happiness much of which seems to be rooted in status and accomplishment.
Without connectivity, we have no context, no history and few things taste better to one than being known, resisted, and eventually agreed with. Happiness is having someone who truly knows you and whom you truly know say to you that they've said or done something you'd excoriate them about. Bottom line, they know how you'll react and they know they'll feel better after sharing with you their short narrative. And while you've read their script over and over again you somehow feel good that they feel you know how to read them and, like a forgiving teacher, you'll excoriate them briefly but then you'll write little notes on the margins of their essay and they'll know how to get better and do right by you.
Familiarity gives me comfort because familiarity gives us all comfort. Humans like routine. It's
due to our enculturation. We have no say in the matter. It's like saying we like how water tastes after being deprived of it. Another synonym for familiarity is intimacy and intimacy is harder for some for it resides in the territory of vulnerability where impulse and unhoned instinct doesn't do very well and where damage can easily be dished out. Giving intimacy means getting known and there is no ouvre bigger and more significant than that. C.S. Lewis wrote that we "read to know we are not alone."
Those who say they can do without familiarity have never had the courage to acquire it, they're strangers to it. And one could never rely on someone who refuses familiarity because to refuse it means to refuse a shared history, connectivity. And while contentedness can happen free of context, happiness needs more, at the very least, it needs a semblance of importance. The feeling of sucking on frozen grapes makes some, including me, feel content. Wearing silk panty hose with a form-fitting black dress hand-made in Berlin in the early 90's while wearing high-heeled boots as I meet someone for dinner makes me feel good. I do it when I feel like my inner self needs excoriating so that it can get to feeling better.
Monday, December 12, 2011
The Futility of Suffering and Nietzsche
Right after I woke up this morning I started reading the new articles on Vanity Fair. I started reading a new piece on aesthetic stagnation first and after getting upbeat at its premise it only seems apropos that I move on to Hitchens.
While reading Hitchens' article entitled Trial of the Will, I got to thinking about things I'd either experienced in life before or read in previous publications. I illustrate. First I got to thinking about David whom I met in grad school. He turned on to Dosteyevsky and Nietzsche around the same time we met so naturally we clicked. I'd run into David at the oddest times. One night, when my grad school significant other and I were driving home from dinner, I saw David walking by himself on the sidewalk. "Slow down. I think that's David" I say. We do just that. I roll down the window and say, "David! It's late. And cold. I mean, not that it matters." I felt my person giving me an eye-rolling but, naturally, I didn't care. What David and Bri time meant was hours upon hours of Lit Crit talk. We would both dive into a literary discussion almost maniacally. We'd start with Bulgakov's Master and Margarita, move on to Dostoyevsky and Nietzsche and in true, 'light' fashion finish with a good chat about existentialism.
Ha. I think to myself, this morning, as my hair is wrapped up in a towel and I find some pleasure out of smelling the body lotion I've been keen on for years. I get on my email and do a keyword on David. I have to say 'hey,' I think to myself. I enter his name and a sea of David words come at me. I open one particular email. The first sentence that jumps out was when he was traveling one summer around Europe and he was telling me about me his peregrinage. He writes, "I suffer regularly which is good for a person, I reckon." Ah, David!
Suffering and learning. Suffering does little for learning. It makes sense that we'd create a whole narrative of learning around it. I mean, it's bound to serve some purpose, right? Actually, the more I think about this, and I've bee thinking about this since early adolescence, the more I'm convinced that it's nothing more than a shallow myth. This is why back in 2004 I readily agreed with Woody Alen and why I easily get on Hitchens' side on the topic today. Granted, I also have much literary and historical context to back this up. Think Nietzsche. People tend to romanticize him and more often than not forget that his twilight years were yet another example of how impervious to learning one is when in deep suffering. Nietzsche's last years were a scene straight out of the third circle of hell.
There's little catharsis in suffering. The only good feeling that it generates is when it reaches its very end. The thought of not having to experience it again produces relief. And relief feels good when tasted after hardship.
I'm amazed at how our brains work. During the time I was in the shower this morning, it managed to give me a nice little essay, equipped with a full bibliography, of my readings and experiences on one topic. I started with David, moved on to Nietzsche, and closed with Woody Allen's Spiegel magazine interview back in 2005. I read it closely then. I also taught it in my German Literature course that Spring. A bit from the article says, and I translate:
"There is nothing really redeeming about tragedy. Tragedy is tragic, and it's so painful that people try to twist it and say "it's terribly hard, but look we've achieved something, we've learned something." This is a weak attempt to find some kind of meaning in tragedy. But there is no meaning. There is no up-side. And suffering does not redeem anything; there is no positive message to learn from it."
What was Nietzsche's phrase again, Was mich nicht umbringt macht mich stärker i.e., "What doesn't kill me, makes me stronger"? And how strong exactly was Nietzsche during the last decade of his life? By all accounts he was an etalon of feebleness thanks to his intense physical and mental suffering.
So, what's die Moral der Geschichte? The moral of the story would be, when attempting to grapple with hardship, stay away from Nietzsche and any viable association you might want to make between learning and suffering. Sometimes, stuff needs to be experienced and left alone, wrapped up and hidden in some drawer.
I close with Hitchens' own words on pain. His own experience of sickness and suffering is what fueled his new article on Vanity Fair. He concludes: "I am attracted to the German etymology of the word “stark,” and its relative used by Nietzsche, stärker, which means “stronger.” In Yiddish, to call someone a shtarker is to credit him with being a militant, a tough guy, a hard worker. So far, I have decided to take whatever my disease can throw at me, and to stay combative even while taking the measure of my inevitable decline. I repeat, this is no more than what a healthy person has to do in slower motion. It is our common fate. In either case, though, one can dispense with facile maxims that don’t live up to their apparent billing."
What I learned from reading Greek tragedies as a child was that the best thing to do with suffering is to evade. Pretty good reaction, if you ask the adult version of me. Pretty, pretty good.
While reading Hitchens' article entitled Trial of the Will, I got to thinking about things I'd either experienced in life before or read in previous publications. I illustrate. First I got to thinking about David whom I met in grad school. He turned on to Dosteyevsky and Nietzsche around the same time we met so naturally we clicked. I'd run into David at the oddest times. One night, when my grad school significant other and I were driving home from dinner, I saw David walking by himself on the sidewalk. "Slow down. I think that's David" I say. We do just that. I roll down the window and say, "David! It's late. And cold. I mean, not that it matters." I felt my person giving me an eye-rolling but, naturally, I didn't care. What David and Bri time meant was hours upon hours of Lit Crit talk. We would both dive into a literary discussion almost maniacally. We'd start with Bulgakov's Master and Margarita, move on to Dostoyevsky and Nietzsche and in true, 'light' fashion finish with a good chat about existentialism.
Ha. I think to myself, this morning, as my hair is wrapped up in a towel and I find some pleasure out of smelling the body lotion I've been keen on for years. I get on my email and do a keyword on David. I have to say 'hey,' I think to myself. I enter his name and a sea of David words come at me. I open one particular email. The first sentence that jumps out was when he was traveling one summer around Europe and he was telling me about me his peregrinage. He writes, "I suffer regularly which is good for a person, I reckon." Ah, David!
Suffering and learning. Suffering does little for learning. It makes sense that we'd create a whole narrative of learning around it. I mean, it's bound to serve some purpose, right? Actually, the more I think about this, and I've bee thinking about this since early adolescence, the more I'm convinced that it's nothing more than a shallow myth. This is why back in 2004 I readily agreed with Woody Alen and why I easily get on Hitchens' side on the topic today. Granted, I also have much literary and historical context to back this up. Think Nietzsche. People tend to romanticize him and more often than not forget that his twilight years were yet another example of how impervious to learning one is when in deep suffering. Nietzsche's last years were a scene straight out of the third circle of hell.
There's little catharsis in suffering. The only good feeling that it generates is when it reaches its very end. The thought of not having to experience it again produces relief. And relief feels good when tasted after hardship.
I'm amazed at how our brains work. During the time I was in the shower this morning, it managed to give me a nice little essay, equipped with a full bibliography, of my readings and experiences on one topic. I started with David, moved on to Nietzsche, and closed with Woody Allen's Spiegel magazine interview back in 2005. I read it closely then. I also taught it in my German Literature course that Spring. A bit from the article says, and I translate:
"There is nothing really redeeming about tragedy. Tragedy is tragic, and it's so painful that people try to twist it and say "it's terribly hard, but look we've achieved something, we've learned something." This is a weak attempt to find some kind of meaning in tragedy. But there is no meaning. There is no up-side. And suffering does not redeem anything; there is no positive message to learn from it."
What was Nietzsche's phrase again, Was mich nicht umbringt macht mich stärker i.e., "What doesn't kill me, makes me stronger"? And how strong exactly was Nietzsche during the last decade of his life? By all accounts he was an etalon of feebleness thanks to his intense physical and mental suffering.
So, what's die Moral der Geschichte? The moral of the story would be, when attempting to grapple with hardship, stay away from Nietzsche and any viable association you might want to make between learning and suffering. Sometimes, stuff needs to be experienced and left alone, wrapped up and hidden in some drawer.
I close with Hitchens' own words on pain. His own experience of sickness and suffering is what fueled his new article on Vanity Fair. He concludes: "I am attracted to the German etymology of the word “stark,” and its relative used by Nietzsche, stärker, which means “stronger.” In Yiddish, to call someone a shtarker is to credit him with being a militant, a tough guy, a hard worker. So far, I have decided to take whatever my disease can throw at me, and to stay combative even while taking the measure of my inevitable decline. I repeat, this is no more than what a healthy person has to do in slower motion. It is our common fate. In either case, though, one can dispense with facile maxims that don’t live up to their apparent billing."
What I learned from reading Greek tragedies as a child was that the best thing to do with suffering is to evade. Pretty good reaction, if you ask the adult version of me. Pretty, pretty good.
Tuesday, December 6, 2011
When in Doubt, Think Dante
I think about Dante all the time.
All the time.
I especially think of Dante when in times of hardship.
Of course, it helps that since the age of nine I got in the habit of maniacally memorizing verse after verse and, oddly, have yet to forget a single stanza in the terza rima. Dante helps me organize my thoughts. His work helps me get centered and put things in perspective.
As a doctoral student in Germanics, I took a PhD course in Dante's Inferno. I was the only non-Italian PhD candidate in the course. The professor, one of the better known Dantisti in the States, asked me one day, "Brikena, come mai Dante?" i.e.: "Brikena, how come Dante?"
Stutteringly, I said: "Perche, eeee, insomma, perche mi parla...." i.e.: "Because uhm, well, because he talks to me."
Since early childhood, I've most likely spent thousands of hours reading Dante. Easily. Dante never feels like reading. It doesn't feel like work. It's like listening to music. It speaks to me. And unlike much else, it never disappoints. It always gives me something. It doesn't just take. It gives. Therein lies its unfading novelty and attraction. Novelty and attraction can only work well in the confines of giving. Deprive them of it and they'll vanish.
Dante understood that the human experience is marked by universality. He knew that while we might term certain emotions and feelings differently, our experience of the great basics, i.e., love, pain, anger, anxiety, difficulty are fundamentally the same whether one is professor Brunetto Latini who's condemned to inferno for eternity (see Canto XV) or Virgil, the guiding poet, who was unluckily born a few decades 'ahead of his time.'
Feeling good is 'dolce' and feeling badly is not. The dichotomy is clear to all. Dante refers to himself as two separate entities. On the one hand, there's the generally cerebral Dante, il poeta laureato, and on the other hand, there's Dante, l'uomo, the highly emotional man. The man, who faints at the sight of the great emotional pain of Paolo and Francesca in Canto V.
Dante embraces his emotional and cerebral sides fully. In my view, this is what makes me be as Dante-centric as I am. Dante fills a need. A need to self-soothe and inevitably self-ameliorate.
Why Dante, others, other than Prof. Di Tommaso have asked me. Why not Sophocles or Shakespeare? Or Goethe, even. For crying out loud, especially Goethe!
The answer is easy. I've long held that we don't get to choose art. Art chooses us. I believe this. As a matter of fact, I'll venture so much as to say that few things are solely choice-based. Very few. We think we choose but in most situations we are swayed to go one way over another.
Daily, I'm amazed at the multitude of applications that La Commedia lends itself to. And daily I'm tempted to apply it.
Dante spoke to me first on a cerebral level as someone with a doctorate of philosophy. He spoke to me equally strongly on a personal level. My whole life I've had difficulty with displays of emotions. I've always privileged my cerebral side. And unfairly so at times. But the older I get and the more I experience raw life, the more I allow myself to taste the opposite of ease, levity, and happiness, the more I'm drawn to Dante. It's hard, no, impossible, to ignore something that reaches you both on a cerebral and emotional level contemporaneously. Try it. You'll most likely fail.
What's been claiming most of my thoughts recently is the notion of the pursuit of happiness and it tenability. I've long wondered what it is that Dante must have experienced to write in Canto V that there's:
Nessun maggior dolore
Che ricordarsi del tempo felice
Nella miseria (lines 121-123)
There is no greater sorrow
Than to be mindful of the happy time
In misery.
Cerebrally, I've always known this. I've lectured on it plenty. Emotionally, I'm convinced that the only way to get happiness, to truly capture it albeit fleetingly, is to see it in conjunction with pain and memory. Happiness cannot exist in the confines of complacency. It couldn't. It needs the oxygen of immediacy. It can't be without. Happiness can only be when ridden with the anxiety of potential loss.
Being, at times, happy is the hardest task to accomplish. Some are aided by their respective genetic makeup to have a somewhat easier/harder time with happiness. Generally, however, happiness takes much conscious work. If left to chance, the end result will undoubtedly be difficult. The gift of introspection, some call it. This ability that some have to look inward to find answers to the human condition. Introspection is not a gift. Introspection is work, a lot of arduous work. Introspection cannot be given one. It needs to be acquired. One individual at a time.
All the time.
I especially think of Dante when in times of hardship.
Of course, it helps that since the age of nine I got in the habit of maniacally memorizing verse after verse and, oddly, have yet to forget a single stanza in the terza rima. Dante helps me organize my thoughts. His work helps me get centered and put things in perspective.
As a doctoral student in Germanics, I took a PhD course in Dante's Inferno. I was the only non-Italian PhD candidate in the course. The professor, one of the better known Dantisti in the States, asked me one day, "Brikena, come mai Dante?" i.e.: "Brikena, how come Dante?"
Stutteringly, I said: "Perche, eeee, insomma, perche mi parla...." i.e.: "Because uhm, well, because he talks to me."
Since early childhood, I've most likely spent thousands of hours reading Dante. Easily. Dante never feels like reading. It doesn't feel like work. It's like listening to music. It speaks to me. And unlike much else, it never disappoints. It always gives me something. It doesn't just take. It gives. Therein lies its unfading novelty and attraction. Novelty and attraction can only work well in the confines of giving. Deprive them of it and they'll vanish.
Dante understood that the human experience is marked by universality. He knew that while we might term certain emotions and feelings differently, our experience of the great basics, i.e., love, pain, anger, anxiety, difficulty are fundamentally the same whether one is professor Brunetto Latini who's condemned to inferno for eternity (see Canto XV) or Virgil, the guiding poet, who was unluckily born a few decades 'ahead of his time.'
Feeling good is 'dolce' and feeling badly is not. The dichotomy is clear to all. Dante refers to himself as two separate entities. On the one hand, there's the generally cerebral Dante, il poeta laureato, and on the other hand, there's Dante, l'uomo, the highly emotional man. The man, who faints at the sight of the great emotional pain of Paolo and Francesca in Canto V.
Dante embraces his emotional and cerebral sides fully. In my view, this is what makes me be as Dante-centric as I am. Dante fills a need. A need to self-soothe and inevitably self-ameliorate.
Why Dante, others, other than Prof. Di Tommaso have asked me. Why not Sophocles or Shakespeare? Or Goethe, even. For crying out loud, especially Goethe!
The answer is easy. I've long held that we don't get to choose art. Art chooses us. I believe this. As a matter of fact, I'll venture so much as to say that few things are solely choice-based. Very few. We think we choose but in most situations we are swayed to go one way over another.
Daily, I'm amazed at the multitude of applications that La Commedia lends itself to. And daily I'm tempted to apply it.
Dante spoke to me first on a cerebral level as someone with a doctorate of philosophy. He spoke to me equally strongly on a personal level. My whole life I've had difficulty with displays of emotions. I've always privileged my cerebral side. And unfairly so at times. But the older I get and the more I experience raw life, the more I allow myself to taste the opposite of ease, levity, and happiness, the more I'm drawn to Dante. It's hard, no, impossible, to ignore something that reaches you both on a cerebral and emotional level contemporaneously. Try it. You'll most likely fail.
What's been claiming most of my thoughts recently is the notion of the pursuit of happiness and it tenability. I've long wondered what it is that Dante must have experienced to write in Canto V that there's:
Nessun maggior dolore
Che ricordarsi del tempo felice
Nella miseria (lines 121-123)
There is no greater sorrow
Than to be mindful of the happy time
In misery.
Cerebrally, I've always known this. I've lectured on it plenty. Emotionally, I'm convinced that the only way to get happiness, to truly capture it albeit fleetingly, is to see it in conjunction with pain and memory. Happiness cannot exist in the confines of complacency. It couldn't. It needs the oxygen of immediacy. It can't be without. Happiness can only be when ridden with the anxiety of potential loss.
Being, at times, happy is the hardest task to accomplish. Some are aided by their respective genetic makeup to have a somewhat easier/harder time with happiness. Generally, however, happiness takes much conscious work. If left to chance, the end result will undoubtedly be difficult. The gift of introspection, some call it. This ability that some have to look inward to find answers to the human condition. Introspection is not a gift. Introspection is work, a lot of arduous work. Introspection cannot be given one. It needs to be acquired. One individual at a time.
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