Measures
Once you're in that midnight, you own the stars and possess the nights around them. The nights are what make these stars bright. These aren't stars you dream. They are what cannot occupy dreams. Try to dream in there, and your dream will be about expanding the midnight you're in, reaching for a moon brighter than sun. It's never too late to open your eyes.
Russell Brand
I'm always tempted to say he's a piece of art, not a piece of work. He's quite clever, and I admire that part about him, the quick wit, the charm that can suffocate you, if you don't watch, and his love for language. You can feel it from his conversations, interviews, or jokes. I mean his stand-up gigs, I think, are ok, in terms of wit and cleverness. I suppose in stand-up he has to somehow bomb the audience with stuff, anything entertaining for his audience that's not necessarily witty or clever. I still think Jim Carrey or Robin Williams, are good and better at stand-up; and it's probably safe to include Amy Sedaris in that line-up. Now what I think Russell is very good at is in individual interactions, whether he's talking to a guest on 1 Leicester Square, or being a guest in the Paul O'Grady show. I give him an A+ on those one-on-one episodes. Jim Carrey and Robin Williams, when invited as guests, tend to dominate one-on-one interactions, as if their interviewer or host doesn't exist. The process of interaction is quite energizing for Russell's style of comedy. I do hope to read his autobiography My Booky Wook, which has gotten some fantastic reviews on the other side of the Atlantic.
Silence of Evidence
A hand moves a page of a book, from right to left. The fingers feel the paper, skin of words. There is pressure to get in the skin, to puncture thin. Bottom of fingers glide over text, before finger-prints collapse on print, ideas. Outside, the lake remains calm, unable to move waves. Something liquid-red drops on one of the pages, followed by more red.
Riptide
Ocean of networks. Depth is in your fingers, on their tips. But there is no bottom, nor surface. There's that school of fish called advertisements. Eat some, most are poison. Sometimes you need some poison. But fear of death may just be simulacra of something. The big bang perhaps? Coming of messiahs? Bermuda Triangle? There's a wind along the shore. The sands are calm, refusing to feel air, its movements, but rather the notes from the ocean, the murmur of sirens, shadows without premonitions.
Road
High-definition vision, silence. You turn on some music, as you head north on Interstate 5. Continuity takes over the taste of coffee, twisting caffeine into history, pasts breathing on cinematic choreographies. The decent god in you hopes to deliver everything that gives symphony of truths. That's the hope. But the audacity of that hope is often set aside. Perhaps this is necessary, even inevitable. Creators need illusions, after all, especially the best illusions that can frame the best pictures, those that expand, become memory, or those that feel like fresh night-air, at the next rest-stop.
Days After Inauguration
What's the bird's eye-view around Washington, D.C., on presidential inauguration? Dizzy that there are more people, under their wings, a sort of delirious and happy panic to feel something more than historic? Can they sense something in that panic that makes them feel a bit human, be with them, flock with them? Does flying feel like traps, and walking fresh escape? Do older birds feel like something is invigorated, or re-invigorated down there, an idea, the shadow in a notion? It could be argued that attaching the word 'truly' to the word 'democratic' has reached a point of overused, but that emphasizing this overused can be considered unethical: because there's simply no such thing as over-used in this context, because these mouths are just celebrating, aligning themselves to something what they thought is impossible. There will, indeed, be prognostications of new dimensions, and the polishing of existing paradigms, while old habits remain, like a certain blindness among taxi drivers in many American cities not to let in some people in their backseats, a blindness that doesn't have the positive ring of color blindness. It's the most exciting time to use hyperboles, to chant the greatness of this and that, about a system that works, and takes itself seriously. There'll be inebriations of affirmations, both implicit and explicit, most would be optimistic, but a percentage of them too-optimistic and competes with incisive doubts about the new man in that house of American houses. The normal flow is to, indeed, be get caught in the excitements, to give in to the contagious yes-we-can spirit. What we hope also is that there's power in being skeptical, especially in the depth of this change we think we're in. We hope our eyes do not have the affliction that adores religion of surfaces. The 4th of November 2008 has questioned that religion, and the world has a reaffirmed awe about a country named United States of America, that, indeed, despite its recent history - often observed in horrific, archived footage of Selma, Alabama 1965 - the U.S.A. can be used as a paradigm of having a unified, national spirit.
Colors
Waiting for the traffic light. The reaction is almost immediate to turn left. It's another red light at the next intersection. Before the car reaches that crossing, the light turns green, as the music in the car takes on a bluesy mellowness. Many blues could be the color of the next intersections, taking away the red, yellow, and green. But there's no moon-color to take away this time. It's drizzling. The streets are wet, full of reflections. Car-lights illuminate them deeper into the night.
David Foster Wallace
I may be one of those who discovered him, much later, maybe the last couple of years. And it's really sad to hear the news about his death, especially that he took his own life. The blogospshere and chatlines are, no doubt, talking about him endlessly, this very moment, and the next few months, or years. Below is a link to a transcript of the Kenyon College commencement speech he had delivered, three years ago, in May 21, 2005. I didn't discover this link myself, but from another blog. The piece can be inspiring. And I could feel the humanity, the person in the writer. You could feel he is deeply in touch with his narcissism, but he hasn't forgotten the profound value of empathy. I like him in that speech. I feel like I should finally finish reading his masterpiece, Infinite Jest. But I do wonder about him having the courage to take his own life, where it comes from, the force behind it, the determination to be in the process of getting that rope, tying the knot, and all that. This makes me wonder about Ernest Hemingway, and Sylvia Plath. Hemingway's process was quick. But Sylvia's, too, was not quick. I suppose it comes down to choice, and the profound freedoms choice can give us.
Here's the link:
http://www.marginalia.org/dfw_kenyon_commencement.html
(Unfortunately, this link doesn't work anymore. But if you click this link, there's an explanation why it's not there anymore.)
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