Ken’s Blog

I confess I am very happy that Rio de Janeiro will be hosting the 2016 Olympics. It is a beautiful city that has been sadly neglected in recent decades – this could be just the shot in the arm needed by this cidade maravilhosa to bring it back to its state of glory. In the larger scheme of things, it was obviously a good decision, and the International Olympic Committee recognized that.

One thing about the competition that puzzles me is the criticism from some in the U.S. of our president for flying to Copenhagen and arguing forcefully in favor of our own Chicago as the 2016 host city. When I think about the role of President – or the leader of any nation for that matter – it’s hard to define that office in a way that wouldn’t encourage such a mission. In these difficult economic times, it would have been a significant boon to our nation to have nabbed that prize. By sending our leader, we were putting our best foot forward – such a show of seriousness can only help one’s case.

Of course if he hadn’t gone, there would have been far greater criticism. President Obama would have “owned” the loss: Whatever other factors were involved in the IOC’s decision, if he had turned his back on the process – a bid from his own home city – there would have been consensus that the loss was his fault, for not lending his support. To have failed even to try because the odds were against success would rightly have been judged as a craven decision.

There are so many real things to do discuss in this country. Decisions on Afghanistan, the bank bailout, health care, environmental policy, these are all subjects for legitimate debate. It is important that the administration not get a free pass on any policy issues that affect millions of Americans – and in some cases the rest of the world.

But when the topic at hand is a no-brainer – when the president does something as obviously reasonable as flying to Copenhagen to stand up for our nation’s bid to host the Olympics – there is something peculiarly idiotic about taking him to task for this. It’s as though some critics of the administration are deliberately trying to be perceived as clowns – to destroy their own credibility – when in fact our nation needs them to be taken seriously, so that we can continue to have a serious back and forth on the real issues that face our nation.

The ruins lie in the sunlight, no longer smoldering. The houses on either side sit silently, dappled by the shifting light through the trees that line the quiet street. A small cloud drifts lazily overhead in the otherwise cloudless blue of the afternoon sky. Somewhere in the far off distance a dog begins to bark, breaking the silence. A car sits in the driveway, facing the blackened heap that used to be a home.

The girl stands at the edge of the driveway, a sorrowful look upon her face. In her left hand she holds a bible. The bible is old and well-worn. She opens it to the place she had marked, and in a soft but steady voice reads from Corinthians 15:

“Behold, I will tell you a mystery; We shall not all sleep but we shall be changed.”

When she is finished, she walks past the car, absently placing the bible on the roof of the car, and continues to walk up to the very edge of the ruins. Gingerly, carefully, she steps through the charred remains of what had once been a house. She is looking down, an intent look upon her face, as though searching for something.

Then, in one graceful movement, she stoops down and picks up a soot covered teapot. It is still somehow intact. She looks down at the pot for a long while, holding it gently by its white porcelain handle. She runs her finger over the smooth surface, slowly and carefully tracing a perfect circle.

Well, almost a perfect circle.

There is a scene in the Steven Spielberg film “Minority Report” where John Anderton (played by Tom Cruise), on the run from the law, is riding on a subway, and a man in another seat is reading the newspaper. Of course it’s not one of today’s newspapers – it’s a future newspaper, made from some sort of e-paper. In a shot over the man’s shoulder, the ink on the paper changes – in real time – to a news alert warning citizens to look out for the dangerous criminal John Anderton.

It’s a lovely, brilliant, totally paranoid moment, effective in the way we’ve come to expect from Spielberg. Not only is our hero’s world falling apart, but even the newspapers are changing, like shifting shadows in a graveyard, closing in on him more tightly every minute. The effect is rather like the feeling of paranoia evoked by Fritz Lang in a much earlier film – “M” – as the entire world gradually closes in on Peter Lorre’s fugitive sociopath.

Some of us – at least for now – still read the paper on paper. I realize that we are dwindling in number. Those of us who still wait for the thump of paper against door every morning, who turn pages as we sip our morning coffee, are relics of a time fast disappearing. We are as ghosts, holding on to a simpler time when it was actually acceptable to read about what happened yesterday and refer to this as “news”.

Of course the new generation that receives its news on iPhones, Blackberries and various netbooks would be appalled by the thought of getting such old news, already hours out of date by the time it is read. In today’s world this is the informational equivalent of eating yesterday’s guacamole. Alas, one man’s New York Times morning edition is another man’s stale avocado.

I suppose I am holding out for sentimental reasons, for reasons having to do with fond memories of going through the Sunday Times at my parents’ house on lazy mornings years ago, of how the weekend paper spread out across the kitchen table came to stand for family itself, for that safe feeling of being at home with people who really know you, like pajamas and orange juice and Cheerios you could eat one by one right from the box.

But I know that this idea of the New York Times is fast disappearing. In another five years or so, eBook readers will all be selling for well under the “magic price point” of $100, and then they will be made available at no cost, like cell phones, included in every yearly plan that offers the latest eNovels and ePeriodicals.

If you lose your reader, you’ll just pick up another, without thinking about it. Or as Liam Sternberg wrote so memorably in 1986 “You drop your drink then they bring you more”. In other words, that scene from “Minority Report” will soon be the universal reality.

And what of this soon to be absurd lifestyle of mine, this quaint way of being that seems so natural to me now, of reading yesterday’s events with my morning coffee, rather than an everchanging panorama of up-to-the-minute digitally refreshed info?

Pretty soon yesterday’s news will be, well, yesterday’s news. And reading about what happened a day earlier will no longer be called news.

It will be called nostalgia.

Yesterday a friend told me, after I had read one of my blog posts out loud for her, that she thought I should periodically do a video blog, in which I would perform choice selections from these blog posts. I was flattered that she had such faith in my performative abilities, but that’s about as far as it went.

But it seems she had planted a seed in my head. In the midst of teaching a class early this evening, I suddenly realized that over a year ago I had written a blog post on the very topic under discussion. I pulled out my notebook computer and read that blog entry aloud to the class. The students in the class seemed to accept this act as a natural part of the class. And a bit to my surprise, it all felt perfectly natural to me as well.

Until today I had been keeping this blog separate from other things in my life, such as teaching. But this evening I realized that this is an unnecessary separation. After all, the words I write are part of me, just as my right arm is a part of me. There is no reason not to refer back to these words, weaving their power into the narrative of my life as it is lived. They are, after all, my words. Having these blog posts to draw upon is like having hundreds of extra right arms in reserve, at my command. I may not need them most of the time, but they sure are good to have around.

Well then, perhaps I should do that video blog after all…

Romance and truffles, truffles and romance
Nobody knew because nobody had the chance
Things just seemed to happen, simple circumstance
Romance and truffles, truffles and romance

If ever there were reasons, once upon a time
Someone would have told you, it would have been a crime
That something so small turns to something so sublime
Romance and truffles, they will do it ev’ry time

How do we know this? Who is there to say?
Someone will whisper in a very quiet way
Oh do not ask for reasons, do not even pray
Romance and truffles, you will understand one day

For reasons are forgotten, when reasons pass you by
You did not see this coming, oh do not even try
It’s romance and truffles, accept it with a sigh
Deep within your heart of hearts you know the reason why

Today for the first time I heard the phrase ‘reverse colonialism’. This refers to the observation that after centuries of Eurocentric cultures exploiting the rest of the world for their own economic gain, the rest of the world is – de facto – colonizing these first world countries back. England is filling up with people from India, France is becoming populated by Muslims who bring their own culture with them, and so on and so on, in Germany, Holland, and various other nations that have become wealthy over the centuries with the assistance of a somewhat exploitive world economic order.

I’m not sure how fair is this description of the current state of affairs, but even the concept itself contains a wicked irony. The exploited taking over the identity of the exploiter, the tables turned.

I realize that this is nothing new. Rome is now populated by its formerly subjugated peoples, and the ancient Greeks were long ago displaced by the progeny of Alexander’s one-time conquests.

Perhaps this is siimply an inevitable narrative throughout human history, destined to repeat itself forever: In the end, colonialism always flows both ways.

I have a theory that Steam Punk is soon going to become much bigger.

For those of you who don’t know the term, Steam Punk is the general name (coined in 1987 by the Sci Fi author K.W. Jeter, as I learned from my friend Cynthia) for a movement in fashion and fantasy that has been going on for the last forty-odd years, which mixes 19th century (ie: steam-era) sensibilities with raging technophilia. Think Jules Verne’s Captain Nemo in his Nautilus, add some steam powered laser cannons, and you’ve got the right mindset.

The word “punk” is not being used here in its sense of disaffected youth play-acting at working class rage, but rather in the sense of hacking a culture through the reappropriation of resonant imagery – in this case Victorian era imagery.

There are many examples of Steam Punk in popular culture, far more than I could list in this post (HERE is a fairly comprehensive list), from “Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines” in 1965 to the haunted old inventions in “Warehouse 13” and the spy-tech of the forthcoming “Sherlock Holmes” film, with many touchstones along the way. For example, Miyazaki films are just loaded with Steam Punk ideas.

Yet it seems that translating Steam Punk to the big screen is fraught with peril. The Alan Moore graphic novel “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen” and the iconic 1966 TV show “The Wild Wild West” were both great examples of Steam Punk. Yet each was made into a horrifyingly atrocious film.

The reason is obvious. In both cases, the originals integrated their fantasy versions of Victorian era technology into a story that genuinely respected its characters. Whereas the film versions both became so caught up in their cool visuals and gadgets that they ignored such niceties as character, depth, motivation, relationships. The results were pretty much unwatchable.

But the reason I think Steam Punk is going to be big is due to a combination of two things: (1) our nation has just suffered its biggest financial collapse in sixty years, and (2) this collapse has done nothing to abate our culture’s insatiable lust for ever cooler and shinier technology.

In times of hardship, as jobs become scarce, and as people find it progressively more difficult to get by, a culture turns to symbols of elegance, of glamour, to reduce its anxiety and stave off a sense of failure and even panic. This does not happen in times of wealth. For example, in the 1960’s, when the U.S. was experiencing a period of heady economic growth, an entire generation expressed its sense of freedom and empowerment by dressing in rags. Jeans and tee-shirts became symbols of power, symbols which had true potency only because they were “post-economic” – the young people who wore these things generally came from well-off families, and were in rebellion against “conformist” parents possessed of high paying jobs and middle class homes.

But in the Great Depression, people did not glamorize the lost men, the hoboes. That glamorization came later, during a time of post-War abundance. Rather, young people were enraptured by the glamor of Fred and Ginger. Astaire and Rogers were the epitome of elegance. A well turned out top hat, cane and tails, the sweep of a sleeveless evening gown, these were the true symbols of longed-for empowerment in a time of great hardship.

My theory is that Steam Punk is coming around because it will allow an expression of glamour, safely removed from any association with our recent failed cult of modern capitalist excess. Technology and its possibilities can be shown in a context of elegance, in a way that is safe because it is quaint. This is all catnip to a nation that craves its technology fix but is still reeling from economic failure.

I don’t come from this abtractly. I have specific images in mind that I think will resonate with people now. One of these is the sight of Malcolm MacDowell as the time travelling H. G. Wells in Nicholas Meyer’s 1979 film “Time after Time”, dressed elegantly in three piece tweed, glancing at his pocket watch just before putting his time machine into gear. I just have an intuition that in such uncertain times as these, people looking to escape their woes through fantasy will be drawn to the elegance of such visions.

Our nation’s economy may be out of steam, but the sheer exhuberant elegant playfulness of Steam Punk might still provide a way for our wounded nation to tap into its innate spirit of optimism.

We all have our personal books – the ones that we read at just the right time when we were young, that we know changed the way we think about things, and that have probably helped sway the course our lives have taken. For me one such book was Heinlein’s “Stranger in a Strange Land” – first read when I was thirteen. The other day I spotted a paperback copy in a used book store, picked it upon on a whim, and I’m rereading it now. Somewhat to my surprise, this is only the second time I am reading it. I am an inveterate rereader, yet I had never gone back to this, one of my favorites, in all the intervening years.

I suppose I was afraid I’d be disappointed, as I was upon rereading “The Once and Future King” or “Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” – two books of my youth that didn’t quite hold up when reread with my older and perhaps more jaded eyes. But this is different. I am not at all disappointed by my newly rediscovered old friend. I am finding, to my delight, that I remember every character, every scene, every exchange of dialog. Even though I had only read it once, quite a few years ago, each successive page feels like a reunion with an old friend, both familiar and exactly right, like rehearing a song on the White Album.

I think one of the reasons for this is that “Stranger” is meant to be both serious and fun – a point my adolescent self had completely grokked the first time around. It has profound points to make about life, but you know you’re in for a jolly time right from that killer opening sentence: “Once upon a time there was a Martian named Valentine Michael Smith”.

Heinlein manages to convey what conventional wisdom would describe as both a radical right and a radical left ideology, and somehow succeeds in merging them seamlessly. On the one hand there is a strong message that life is only meaningful if we all look after each other, if we see all of humanity as an extended family, and care for our fellow humans with unbounded compassion. This is radical left thinking at its most pure.

At the same time, there is a powerful libertarian message affirming that each of us, every individual, is unique and unlike any other, and that as you go through life you need to ignore the damned fools and the ignorant bastards who make the mistake of thinking you are supposed to think and act like anyone else. The main character is in the rare position of starting out as a perfect innocent – able to observe his fellow humans with no prejudice, and therefore able to see each of them as they really are.

The book offers a powerful and heady combination of philosophies – extreme individuality in the service of extreme compassion: Figure out who you are, and don’t let anybody talk you out of it. Then use that inimitable discovered self to help make the world a better place for others. Looking back now, it’s clear to me that my views on self and society were more influenced by reading that book at the tender age of thirteen than by anything I was taught in school.

I was discussing the book this evening with my friend Cynthia. We got to talking about who we would cast in the movie version (although I sincerely hope there is never a movie version; I suspect any attempt would merely diminish a perfect book). Those of you who have read the book might be interested in our debate about who would be the perfect casting choice for the larger-than-life character of Jubal Harshaw. Cynthia suggested Anthony Hopkins. As for me, I’m stumped. The character is so vivid in my mind that I’m having a hard time seeing him impersonated by any mere, um, actor.

Frankly I had the same problem when I saw the film “Sophie’s Choice” after finishing Styron’s book. Meryl Streep was amazing of course, but the character in the book had grown so vivid in my mind that I simply couldn’t see Streep as Sophie, merely as somebody doing a great job of impersonating Sophie. So you can see that I’m a pretty hard case.

But I’m willing to try to keep an open mind. When I think of Harshaw, somehow I picture a cross between Ian McShane and Ed Asner, which I know sounds ridiculous. I’m guessing that a number of people reading this blog have read “Stranger in a Strange Land”. Can anybody think of who would make for the perfect cinematic “Jubal Harshaw”?

Under that artist’s expert hands, the image fills out rapidly. At first merely two vague forms, but then the details begin to emerge. After a fw minutes is clear that the image is of two women, standing side by side. They are standing with their arms around each others shoulder. One woman has a look and bearing of confidence. The other seems shy, withdrawn. Yet from even a cursory examimation of their faces it is clear that the two women are sisters.

As the image becomes clearer, the details more defined, the artist’s hand, at first o swift and confident, begins to slow. The artist stares down at the picture he has made, and slowly inhales. He places his pencil gently down upon the stair step beside him, taking care that it does not roll.

A single tear drifts slowly down the artist’s face, and falls upon the paper. The tear lands upon the corner of the paper. The artist’s gaze moves from the depiction of the two women to where the tear has fallen, as the tear spreads He traces his finger over the slowly spreading tear stain. Then he puts down the drawing pad, and silently buries his head in his hands.

There are days when I wake up and feel that all is right with the world. On such days of grace, I notice the sun shining, I catch the smile on the face of a stranger, or the spring in somebody’s step as they walk to work, and I just glory in the sheer astonishing fact of being here, alive on this planet, for yet one more day.

And then there are days when I simply cannot locate that feeling. Everything around me is the same, but something inside me is different – some veil of darkness that comes from within. On those days it is hard to see the smiles, but easy to see the sadness, the conflict, the tension in the faces around me.

We all go through these down times. Sometimes we know the reasons for our sadness, and sometimes we don’t. Perhaps a part of our mind is worrying upon the illness of someone we love. Or our attention has been caught by a stray scent, or a fleeting texture, that has reminded us of the loss of a friendship many years ago.

Often as not we have no idea what triggers these things. The feeling drifts into our mind like a heavy mist, darkening all thoughts in its wake. And then – just like that – it is gone again.

I used to think that I could will these feelings away – that I could exercise some trick, some mental jiu jitsu, to keep my mind from dwelling in the dark places. And then at some point I realized that these dips and valleys are integral to the process of being alive, are part of the necessary terrain.

Without the valleys, we would never recognize the peaks, would not be aware of our days of grace. What a shame that would be – to not know when you are standing on the mountain, and thereby miss your chance to shout for joy at being alive.