I saw Fellowship of the Ring tonight for the first time in four or five years.
I think one of the more touching things about Lord of the Rings, and maybe sword-and-scepter epics in general, is the presence of powerful parents. Literally. The books are scattered with the fantasy of vigorous, independent adult children whose parents are still at the top of their game.
Maybe this circumstance is actually a lost treasure of the entire pre-industrial past, the days before everything we learned was constantly being torn apart by discovery.
Frodo is wounded, lying on the ground in a forest. "We have to take him," Arwen says, "to my father."
Saturday, October 20, 2007
Thursday, October 4, 2007
On the job
Even these days, being part of a newspaper's big voltron body requires a close acquaintance with caprice. We tear through the day on a few dozen slapdash decisions whose outcomes are probably worth tens of thousands of dollars to the beneficiaries or the victims.
Sunday, September 9, 2007
Three short stories about Bumbershoot
Bumbershoot is Seattle.
The music side of the festival is a huge arching wood structure. It went up with a vision, and it's been rotting in the rain ever since. It's the weird kid after 35 years of socialization. Isn't socialization just another word for rot?
Then there's the art side. The artists have been there the whole time, nibbling. They're the termites beneath the structure. Not part of the rot; they don't care about what's happening up in the sky. They're just building a home in the dirt. This is how they do it, and someday the whole thing is going to fall and whoever's still there afterward will get to put up a new one. Maybe it'll be them.
But termites are social insects.
*
When I tell people outside the Northwest that I live in Portland, they say, "Oh, that must be an interesting place. It's so close to Seattle." For people squinting over from the East, we're a twin star system, one blurry dot in the telescope and 20 light-years away.
Seattle people feel British. You can see it in the limp faces beneath their knit hoods. They refer constantly to "the Pacific Northwest." They're just patronizing enough about Portland to hide their fascination. It's an old empire.
Portlanders do not talk about Seattle.
I think the Easterners have it right. One blue, one red. Both in orbit, and a plume of hydrogen pouring across the gap. The blue one doesn't notice, or need to.
*
When people talk about "experimental" art, it seems like they usually mean that it doesn't have a narrative. Most modern experimental art is lyric art. Concrete art. You understand a Jackson Pollack painting because your eyes are moving.
I love lyric art. But one of the things about narrative is that you remember it. You can abstract it. You can keep it. Lyric art doesn't keep well -- it's great, and a few weeks later you can't remember anything else about it. That's why commercial art is almost always narrative art. And great narratives are great, too.
Experimental art is like the sex. Narrative art is like the relationship.
Hollywood isn't selling sex after all -- it just wants to move in.
The music side of the festival is a huge arching wood structure. It went up with a vision, and it's been rotting in the rain ever since. It's the weird kid after 35 years of socialization. Isn't socialization just another word for rot?
Then there's the art side. The artists have been there the whole time, nibbling. They're the termites beneath the structure. Not part of the rot; they don't care about what's happening up in the sky. They're just building a home in the dirt. This is how they do it, and someday the whole thing is going to fall and whoever's still there afterward will get to put up a new one. Maybe it'll be them.
But termites are social insects.
*
When I tell people outside the Northwest that I live in Portland, they say, "Oh, that must be an interesting place. It's so close to Seattle." For people squinting over from the East, we're a twin star system, one blurry dot in the telescope and 20 light-years away.
Seattle people feel British. You can see it in the limp faces beneath their knit hoods. They refer constantly to "the Pacific Northwest." They're just patronizing enough about Portland to hide their fascination. It's an old empire.
Portlanders do not talk about Seattle.
I think the Easterners have it right. One blue, one red. Both in orbit, and a plume of hydrogen pouring across the gap. The blue one doesn't notice, or need to.
*
When people talk about "experimental" art, it seems like they usually mean that it doesn't have a narrative. Most modern experimental art is lyric art. Concrete art. You understand a Jackson Pollack painting because your eyes are moving.
I love lyric art. But one of the things about narrative is that you remember it. You can abstract it. You can keep it. Lyric art doesn't keep well -- it's great, and a few weeks later you can't remember anything else about it. That's why commercial art is almost always narrative art. And great narratives are great, too.
Experimental art is like the sex. Narrative art is like the relationship.
Hollywood isn't selling sex after all -- it just wants to move in.
Monday, February 5, 2007
Tuesday, January 2, 2007
Monday, January 1, 2007
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
