[Conan O'Brien Explodes Brains]

I’m not a big watcher of television these days, though I had my share of binging when I was a kid.  I still sometimes watch TV dramas in DVD form (or lately, via Netflix streaming), but I just can’t sit down and watch serials on a weekly or even nightly basis.  If anything, I’d rather watch film.  Or bread rise.  Or a picture of a mushroom cloud.  Or stuffed two-headed hen chicks under glass.

But this week I was pulled out of my regular preferences by the debacle in NBC late night programming.  I think most people have heard enough to know the basics of the story, but if you need to catch up, it’s described just fine in this article from Reuters.  What I’m more interested than the controversy (I’ve always loved Conan O’Brien, since I was a teenager, so there was never any question in my mind about who to “support”) is twofold: 1.) I can’t help but feel that comedy reaches its funniest moments right when it approaches a breaking point; and 2.) I’m impressed by Conan’s ability to fully exploit the power of tonal shifts from slapstick to serious in order to say something meaningful.

In terms of the latter point, it was refreshing, even in the midst of some of the funniest moments in Conan’s career, to hear the comedian take a break from gags to thank his supporters and offer a bit of advice to the young people among them.  Hearing Conan plead with people to avoid cynicism will probably be something I remember for the rest of my adult life.  Just because he is still walking away from NBC will many millions of dollars doesn’t mean that he should be content with the situation — he had every opportunity to be negative.  Instead, he chose to exploit the moment to say something positive, and something valuable for people to hear.  People under less pressure have behaved with less grace than Conan did in his final show.

To finish on my first point of interest, though, I would like to think a bit about the comedy specific to Conan’s last week with the Tonight Show.  Anyone familiar with the late work of comedian Bill Hicks will know that as a comic, something changed when he was diagnosed with cancer.  His final album, Arizona Bay, slices with a razor so sharp, even for a comedian known for being “edgy.”  It’s hard to explain, but when things got desperate, he became even funnier.  In similar fashion, the late stand-up routines of David Chappelle just before his breakdown also cross into new territory.  Now granted, Conan isn’t dying, and he doesn’t seem in any danger of a psychological crisis.  But again, I could not help but feel the same energy at work, where an emotional peak on the horizon pushes the jokes to work in a way they simply couldn’t without that looming desperation.  I would prefer that Conan would remain on as the host of the Tonight Show, but I have to guess that even with another decade as host, he never would have reached the heights of hilarity that he scaled in rapid succession this week.

[From Flickritis to Vimeotics]

I remember when I was first introduced to Flickr back in 2003 and what a revelation it became to me in my understanding of not only photography, but what it means to participate in a community of artists.  I say artists in a loose way, since Flickr is not a commune of dedicated aesthetes.  But to include working professionals, conceptual artists, skilled amateurs, and real novices — would be some basic requirements for a real and vibrant community, in my eyes.  It certainly helped that Flickr arrived just when digital cameras were becoming affordable and widely available, just short of total market saturation.  The result, if nothing else, was a development of a new species of image capture (not to mention its now dominant cousin, image processing).  Flickr was an important feature to the development thanks to it’s quick popularity and ease of use.  What Flickr added to the scenario was, no doubt, a definite aesthetic bent since, despite the breadth of talent available in the community there, a strong tendency toward art influenced the pool via powerful users interested in art-making over party photography.  The latter would have its zenith (I suspect) with the explosion of Facebook.

For myself, I arrived at Flickr with a borrowed camera, not having done much with photography other than during two discrete moments in the past, both of which amounting to minor work.  Within a short time I was posting regularly, carrying a camera with me daily, looking everywhere for what I considered to be interesting and artistically valuable shots, and thinking about photography as often as my day job.  Without debating whether any of this was successful (it’s better to avoid facing that for right now!), I at least grew as an amateur, and definitely as a thinker in terms of art.  That I made some lasting friendships seems only accentuates what I see as a crucial factor in my growth as an artist.  In fact, the friendships might be the most important aspect of what made Flickr valuable, for if I am honest, I entered a community of photographers before I entered a community of writers.  And it was community, discourse in the form of comments on photos, communication which helped drive my interest, because I am, like so many people, a social maker.  It is the exchange that happens through and around art which motivates me most.  Some other time I might want to comment on the value of the internet as a site of artistic exchange, but suffice to say it helps explain my participation in many forms of art-related web communities, including the writerly blogosphere.

For similar reasons, I have recently joined Vimeo.  Now I’m not going to argue against the fact that YouTube has done a great deal to break open the barrier between video production/publication and the average user, much as Flickr did in the past.  And I have used YouTube, myself, to publish and distribute some early video projects I put together.  Still, what seemed to be lacking to me was a certain aesthetic take on what this could all be.  I’d already been influenced by Flickr to think of the possibility of the art community, which is something that YouTube has never been.  It has been the repository of all things filthy and funny, which I’ve enjoyed many times, but have never felt compelled to participate in too deeply, particularly as I was operating with a borrowed camera once again.

Vimeo promises something more.  The site is slick, the quality is high, and the user-base is interesting.  Some casual surfing of Vimeo shows that the people using it are definitely more of an artistic temperament, especially since YouTube and other services exist for the benefit of people who want an easy platform for flotsam.  The people who drift to Vimeo do so for particular reasons.  Mine, well I’ve come to learn more, participate more, and produce in a way that fits my concerns.  I don’t want to lay too many expectations on it, trying to force it to recreate my early experiences with Flickr, but I do hope to make some similar developments.

So, without further wind-up, here’s my first study:

Etude No. 1: Threnody (after Popol Vuh) from Jeremy Hawkins on Vimeo.

[300 Reviews]

Consider this the official announcement of my new review site, 300 Reviews.  The goal is fairly simple: collect 300, 300-word reviews on the sorts of subjects that might not fit in mainstream venues.  I want the reviews to be entertaining, thoughtful, creative.  If you want to know more, you can read my spiel.

As of today, you can check out some great pieces by:

Alissa Nutting

Sara Joy Culver

Carl Peterson

Brian Oliu

& Tom Farrington.

Hope you enjoy the site, since I’m enjoying my role as editor.  The work we have coming up is nothing short of wonderful: “Single Ladies” Pronouns, Baking, Cats, & Mass Transit, to name a few.  Check it out, subscribe to the feed if you like it, and forward it to your friends.  We’d like some company over there.

[FLW FTW]

I’m sorry to say it was news to me that Frank Lloyd Wright was a madman. Today in the library I came across a book of his, When Democracy Builds, published in 1945. It was only this book, rather than his designs, which led me to my new understanding of our most famous architect. Take this paragraph from the foreword as early proof:

This book is written in the firm belief that all true human Culture has a healthy idea of the Beautiful as its Life-of-the-Soul: an Aesthetic-Organic, as of Life, not on it. One that nobly relates Man to his environment. This true Aesthetic sense would make of Man a gracious, potent, integral part of the whole of Life. Ethics, Art, and Religion have survived only as they were actual departments of the aesthetic sense; and survive only to the extent that they embodied human sentiment for the Beautiful. To ignore this truth is to misunderstand the Soul of Man, turn him over to Science ignorant of his significance and blind to his destiny.

Of course, this was 1945, and it certainly makes sense that the rants which follow appear at the end of World War II. It makes sense when later he sounds almost Melvillian (thanks to Robert Dixon for the observation) in his disdain for the modern urban citizen:

The properly citified Citizen has become a broker, a vendor of gadgetry, a salesman dealing for profit in human frailties, or a speculator in the ideas and inventions of others; this puller of levers is a presser of the buttons of a vicarious power, power his by way of mechanical craft.

In some ways it’s hard to disagree completely. There is a feeling in the text that seems to prophecy our conquest of the virtual (hello blogosphere), and our increasingly digitized existence, as expressed in the many terminals we use as interfaces with the world. Yet, this is also clearly a form of madness. Paranoid, anxious, hyperbolic madness. The type of mind that would worry about the potential for cultural contagion carried on the backs of immigrants.

It’s still all very palatable, though, until he starts comparing cities to cross-sections of fibrous tumors, and arguing that the Buddha taught individualism.  It leads in the direction of capitalized Democracy, “Law Organic,” and the decentralization of all things.  It leads in the direction of this final line: “The ever moving Infinite that divides Yesterday from Tomorrow is still the Present.”  And what a closer that is.

It reminds me of something I’ve wondered for years: am I crazy enough to be a real artist? I don’t think so. I think I’m doomed to obscurity by my very plainness. Most days I feel grateful for that. And most days I don’t aim to fool onlookers. It reminds me of Slavoj Žižek, pawing around his kitchen in an early scene in the documentary bearing his name. He happily shows the filmmakers how he stores his clothes in kitchen drawers, rather than regular kitchenware. It’s as if he’s screaming, “Look! I am eccentric! I am eccentric enough to be considered a real philosopher, right?” Right. Play on, master thespian.

[Sacked by a gang of snails]

Where have I been?  Right here, baby.  Don’t worry, I never left, it’s just that Druid City can swallow you whole sometimes.

I have every intention to get back in the swing of things, blogwise.  After all, there is news to share, and friends to congratulate!  But first, here’s a picture of a snail I took in Transylvania, and a (long overdue) link to Brian Oliu’s new blog:

Um…Brian Oliu’s New Blog.

Also, my good friend, David Welch, turned me on to this Ashbery poem that I’ve managed to miss up until now.  Go give it a read: “My Erotic Double”!

[Vif Retour]

A couple of months have passed with a flurry.  I made my farewell to Romania and pitched headlong into the intoxicating study of French.  The fabled French countryside regaled me with bike rides, strong cheese, and far too many sunny afternoons to be good for any kind of work.  I did manage to read several novels and books of poems, despite the constant desire to simply lounge in a dumb stupor.  Good friends were also good motivators; I send my thanks to a persistent (if unnamed on this site) study buddy who encouraged my diligent work in various small cafés.  And of course, yes, there were new friends, to whom I owe gratitude for my improvement in conversational French, and for their boundless patience.

My French sojourn also came to an end, though.  I am back, a newly re-minted Yankee, peddling myself in the great state of Alabama.  There are old colleagues, new projects, and good causes to follow up on here.  More appears with every hour.

So, “vif retour!” And be sure I’ll be updating a bit more often, now that I don’t have the excuse of the cafés or the rivers to draw me away from…my secretive body.

Now, go read (and love) this Anne Sexton poem.

[Goodbye Brasov!]

Well, my Fulbright grant period has come to a close.  Debriefing is forthcoming when I’ve had a bit more time to reflect on the last nine months.  But even if it will take some time to gain perspective on all that I’ve experienced and learned here, I want to take a moment to bid this place farewell.  Thanks, Brasov!  You’ve been a good host — both for ups and downs.  I’ll miss living here, I’ll miss the people, and I’ll look forward to returning some day in the future.  For now, though, I’m gone.

[House on the Hill]

This morning in Transylvania it’s raining like the Hoh rain forest and while that’s generally good for my level of indoor productivity, it’s not what I’d hoped for during my last week in Romania.  Still, back home in New York my friends and family have had it much worse with precipitation; I shouldn’t complain.  I can say, at least, that I’ve had plenty of good outdoor experiences this spring, as you can see from the above picture.  It comes from a small village, Măgura, in Parcul National Paitra Craiului, where some friends were gracious enough to take me.  The house belongs to one of those friends, and boasted an amazing view of both Paitra Craiului and the Bucegi mountains.  Have you been to Transylvania?  You should visit.

And that’s all I really wanted to say today.  It’s not a hard-hitting blog post about unrest in Iran, but I think other people have that covered.

[Another Anniversary]

Elaine Feinstein has given us many things for which to be grateful.  Among her novels, poems, translations, and other writing, I was first struck by her translations of Russian poet Marina Tsvetayeva.  You can see a copy of one of the most famous poems here.  If Feinstein’s translations of this remarkable “silver age” poet had been all she could contribute to the literary world, that alone would be enough for us to forever owe her a debt of gratitude.

But she has given us more.  In her most recent book of poems, Talking to the Dead, Feinstein teaches us something about grieving (a subject that you would think exhausted after so many millenia), and shows that extended apostrophe need not be either sanctifying or crude.  I think she demonstrates the best of what grief has to offer: a confusion that is ultimately clarifying in how it shows us how death brings both loss and relief (for the survivors too), both the endearing and the things we might rather forget.  Here’s a highlight from the volume:

Another Anniversary

Today is your birthday.  There is cool sunshine.
Fig leaves and roses cover the wooden fence.
What happiness can I wish you in your death?

Here is the garden that I made for us
though you saw only the winter shape
of a weeping crab apple and a bare plum,

it was my offering, and you received it so;
but most of what we work at disappears.
Little we worry over has importance.

The greedy and the generous have the same end.
The dead know nothing of what we say to them.
Still, in that silence let me write: dear friend.

I don’t know Feinstein personally, but the work brings out many of the ideas I’ve been working with, lately, on grief and loss.  It strikes close to the things I’ve wanted to say.  In short, a simple and high compliment: I find myself wishing I’d written it.  Thus, I felt the need to talk about it and share the poem.  Back to navel-gazing in the near future.

*The above poem is reprinted with permission from Carcanet Press.

[it's okay with me]

The weather in Transilvania is gorgeous today and I’ve every urge to wander up into the mountains for a picnic or something else equally idyllic, but work is running hot — there’s simply too much on the table yet to be dealt with.  Even a single hour this morning with Ian McEwan (yes, still reading Amsterdam) felt like cheating while papers remain to be graded and reports are waiting to be written.

Still, I wanted to take a moment to announce a new film & criticism blog by friend and film scholar, Dustin L. Collins, called it’s okay with me.  (That’s his mug up top.) Dustin’s perspective and scope is fresh: in the short lifespan of his new blog he’s already dealt with a modern classic, one momentous character, a new “best of,” and, yesterday, some truly seminal film animation.  I highly recommend surfing over, reading what he’s already posted, and subscribing to the newsfeed, as this will clearly develop further and grow.

Here’s to new critics and theorists joining the conversation: it’s good; it’s necessary.