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Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can’t Avoid

Tuesday, June 17, 2008

Lemony Snicket, who wrote the delightful Series of Unfortunate Events, has written a book of aphorisms. I loved his other books, though I haven’t finished the Series, and this one is in a similar tone.  I think some of it is taken from the Series, though I’m not sure.

While there’s usually some wisdom under the surface of even the silliest entries, sometimes he makes no pretense of humor at all, and instead delivers a serious, truly profound bit of wisdom. And then some of it’s in the same vein as Jack Handey’s Deep Thoughts.

I love the little stories. There’s one in the introduction about a woman who travels a great distance to meet the wise man on the mountain, and the tragedy that befalls her. Snicket explains it’s this woman’s fate which inspired the book, which exists so a decent amount of wisdom might be readily available, so one wouldn’t have to travel far distances to answer certain pressing questions.

One aphorism I loved—it’s hard to choose which to quote—is this one.  It’s poetry, very well put:

What happens in a certain place can stain your feelings for that location, just as ink can stain a white sheet. You can wash it, and wash it, and still never forget what has transpired, a word which here means “happened and made everybody sad.”

Another is:

Normally it is not polite to go into somebody’s room without knocking, but you can make an exception if the person is dead, or pretending to be dead.

And one more:

Deciding whether or not to trust a person is like deciding whether or not to climb a tree, because you might get a wonderful view from the highest branch, or you might simply get covered in sap, and for this reason many people choose to spend their time alone and indoors, where it is harder to get a splinter.

And still one more:

Fate is like a strange, unpopular restaurant, filled with odd waiters who bring you things you never asked for and don’t always like.

Now I want to go read A Series of Unfortunate Events, but I won’t, because I just got another stack of books from work.  Among them are: Brecht’s Threepenny Opera, for which I also have the music, and which I’m enjoying very much, and Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita.

And, of course, the 19 others on my desk, not to mention all the books I actually own.

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Signal to Noise

Sunday, June 15, 2008

Signal to Noise was written by Neil Gaiman and illustrated by Dave McKean—I don’t want to say ‘drew by’ because McKean, as usual, does much more than draw. The story originally ran in 1989, in the magazine The Face—the fashion marrow of the 80’s—to communicate what the new decade would mean.

It’s the story of a film director who, as he knows he’s dying, composes one last film in his head. The film is set in the year 999 AD, on December 31, when the people of Europe are convinced the world is going to end. So, as people will do, most of them go to the high places—a neighboring mountain—to wait out the last few hours while the priest chants the Mass and a group of ascetics flagellate themselves.

It’s not their best work together—that’s Mr. Punch—but Signal to Noise is still beautiful. I love Dave McKean’s sketchy style—the skewed and melted shapes; the people and objects distilled to blocky slabs of tone; the painted, blended texture; the way he conveys movement. Some of it’s a bit dated—the love affair with computerized collage, for example, has never been my favorite part of McKean’s work—but he’s out there, and he’s experimenting, and that’s enough to carry it. In 1989 all that was fresh, after all. I’m trying to see it as if the Photoshop-cholera bomb hadn’t hit, and the late nineties never happened.

For me, the story is king, and Gaiman comes through. It’s not his best work, but it’s still a story worth telling, and he tells it so I don’t say, “so what?” at the end. Good stories are evocative; they linger and echo. I can still see the hunchback with his wine, dancing through the abandoned streets, calling out, maybe singing a waltz in a minor key, and that image alone makes the reading more than worth it.

It’s about death and entropy, things ending and what we leave behind—if I can be so pat about it. It’s about how to die, and what comes after—not for you, but for those you leave.

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Der Golem

Friday, June 13, 2008

I just watched Der Golem: wie er in die Welt kam, a silent horror film made in 1920, directed by Henrik Galeen and Paul Wegener, and written by Henrik Galeen and Gustav Meyrink. It’s part of a trilogy, though most of the footage from the first film is lost. I confess: none of those names meant anything to me before watching Der Golem, and they still don’t mean much, except these guys made a great film when my great-grandmother was 10. And it is a great film.

The visuals are stunning. The scenery especially—it feels like a dream. It’s black and white (obviously, for that time), and huge swaths of highly contrasted tone dominate; sometimes they obscure, sometimes accent. I found myself wanting to hit pause to savor certain shots—the way the light hits the stone on the houses, the curving walls inside the rabbi’s house, the shots on the road and looking over the hills, a cat walking along a rooftop: nearly every shot gave me something to think about, or at least drove the story on.

The plot (don’t worry, no spoilers here) is based on an old Jewish legend. In the 16th century, the emperor has issued a decree banishing all Jews from the city of Prague, and Rabbi Loew, a well-loved pillar of his community, is planning to resurrect the Golem—a man-shaped creature of clay—to protect his people. He appeals to the powers of darkness, namely Ashtaroth, to reveal the name which will give life to his clay giant. The melding of astrology, magic and traditional religion is particularly intriguing—they pray to and thank God at various points in the film, generally right after performing some ritual or casting a horoscope. Rabbi Loew treats magic like we treat technology.

A beautiful but vain lady in Rabbi Loew’s household (whom I assumed was his daughter, but may have been his wife) falls in love with the gap-toothed messenger named Knight Florian, who brought the decree, and they contrive a secret rendezvous. Love, in 1920, is apparently composed of hugging, breathing heavily, and looking askance at one other. Sometimes they even hold hands. Seems to work for them, though.

Rabbi Loew’s semi-idiot assistant’s main job is falling over and lighting things on fire (he has his own living room smithy/kitchen). He’s terrified of the Golem. He grows by the end, though, and ends up acting the man—not that I’m going to ruin the ending for you.

I’ve never watched a silent film before; I liked it. The black-and-white and the absence of spoken dialogue make watching the film into a bit of a puzzle. It was still plenty accessible, but I found myself doing a bit of guesswork regarding plot. I was almost telling myself the story as we went along, which I think is great. It brings the film into prose territory—my brain—and everything is better in my brain.

Something else about the high contrast black-and-white: I think it works similar to Scott McCloud‘s idea of amplification through simplification (something he speaks on very well in both Understanding Comics and Making Comics).

I connected with the Rabbi more easily through the lighting decisions, and felt the Golem’s alienation and frustration at his lack of independence. I identified more profoundly with him when they obscured his face, either by white-out or shadow, leaving in either case only his colorless eyes. The level of contrast probably wasn’t a stylistic choice, though the lighting certainly was—in 1916 I think that’s just how the film came—but I like it nonetheless.

Certainly a film worth watching. It’s even available for free.

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