The Cozily Suffocating Confines of the Nerd-Ass Comfort Zone

The Idea Of Order At Key West by Wallace Stevens has been on my mind lately. It may be the best examination of the relationship between art and life that I've ever seen.

The lights in the fishing boats at anchor there,
As the night descended, tilting in the air
Mastered the night and portioned out the sea,
Fixing emblazoned zones and fiery poles,
Arranging, deepening, enchanting night.

Art, like the lights, works in the context of of the world in which we live.

Anyway, I followed a link to this blog, which I'd never seen before and which is too self-aggrandizingly nerdy even for me. It retorts to some critiques of Tarantino's hermetically sealed films in part by comparing Tarantino's work to Midsummer Night's Dream, which, the blogger argues, catered to theatre nerds by being about theatre in the same way that Tarantino caters to film nerds by making movies that are only about film.

But while Midsummer has a theatre plot thread, it nests theatre within a broader social context, and then nests that social context within the greater context of The Fairy Realm, which I read as the natural world viewed through an anthropomorphic lens.

Midsummer's rude mechanicals are there for the theatre nerds, no doubt, but the play isn't an act of total nerd indulgence. Shakespeare isn't putting foil on the windows, metaphorically speaking. His is an outward bound, omnivorous and expansive intellect, so when he includes some fun for the theatre nerds it isn't an exercise in keeping nerds inside a narrow nerd-ass comfort zone.

In closing, a quote from Eric Rohmer, translated by Carol Volk, from the introductory interview in The Taste For Beauty, a collection of Rohmer's essays (Rohmer is one of my favorite filmmakers, and an expert at navigating between reality and the artifice of film):

"...cinema has more to fear from its own cliches than from those of the other arts. Right now, I despise, I hate, cinephile madness, cinephile culture. In 'Le Celluloid et le marbre" I said that it was very good to be a pure cinephile, to have no culture, to be cultivated only by the cinema. Unfortunately, it has happened: there are now people whose culture is limited to the world of film, who think only through film, and when they make films, their films contain beings who only exist through film, whether the reminiscence of old films or the people in the profession...film is the art that can feed on itself the least. It is certainly less dangerous for the other arts."

Second Post of the Day

After reading this column by L. Brent Bozell I was all excited about the inaugural poem. Bozell is the self-appointed spokesman of people with plastic grapes on top of their TV cabinets, and his manufactured outrage is a handy guide to things I might wanna check out. It's evident from this column that he doesn't know what constitutes authentic avant-garde work (or that he thinks we don't), and that he conflates "being taken outside one's comfort zone" with "having grounds for offense," so I inverse-heed his words. I felt let down this time, though: the poem was true but banal (or banal but true, to phrase it a bit more charitably). I hate to come across like a wannabe Harold Bloom, but I'd prefer something that made us work a little harder.

hi bye

We were not born to survive, only to live.

Laurie came to visit this weekend, and we did some living!

But we left a play at intermission. The first time we've done that, and the first time I've done that in many a moon, but the show was a dire letdown despite a few good performances. Maybe I'm less forgiving of Birmingham community theatre because I'm trying to separate from it in preparation for moving.

Anyway, at intermission we stood outside the theatre, planning to flee, but I spotted an old college chum (let's call her Carmilla) who was warm to me in those school days. Carmilla and I parted on cheerful terms, yet I found her flinty and unwelcoming today. She leaned against the wall of the theatre, smiling stiffly and giving me strained, cheerless replies, and it seemed to me that the theatre, which had been a second home to me for years, was speaking through her, threatening rejection if I abandoned the show.

We left anyway. I've left shows at intermission before, and returned to do shows at the same venue. Laurie and I went out to eat, had a jolly time, and look forward to my final move to North Carolina.

Passing Time

Between burnt skin, peeling skin, and formerly fake-tattooed skin that resisted burning and bears the marks in negative of the erstwhile tats, my upper body has some odd patterning all over it. I'm also rockin' the spare tire, so I look like a decorative Buddha.

I'm really excited about moving my Birmingham departure into endgame. I'll be packing up and clearing out, with a tentative departure date in early July.

I'm currently fixated on the poetry of Derek Walcott. I listened to a CD of poets reading their poetry (The Caedmon Poetry Collection) and particularly liked his material and voice. I went to the library and found that he's quite prolific... they have a slew of his books. His work is deft, challenging, but accessable, sweeping in its scope but particular about details. It has historic and mythic heft, yet feels utterly personal. His poetry is my latest textbook for appreciating the world.