A Month in Jakarta: The food

Part of my woefully inadequate preparation for Indonesia included an attempt to familiarize myself with the cuisine. Considering the dearth of Indonesian restaurants in Spokane, I turned to recipes and their accompanying pictures, but there were no determined efforts made in this direction, no searches of online cookbooks or orders from Amazon. At best, whenever I found myself in a bookstore, I would peruse the cooking section. There was always an Asian section and plenty of Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese and Thai samplings within it but, disappointingly, never any Indonesian.

Shortly after my arrival I thought this was so because a cookbook completely composed of "Make white rice. Make sauce. Put sauce over rice." would not be terribly interesting to most Americans. Since expanding my palate, however, I am convinced it is because America simply lacks the ingredients.

And that is a mighty shame because they have some excellent food here. I do not often see a single ingredient enhanced with spices treated as a centerpiece as the Indonesians are so keen on mixing everything, but that hardly matters as the food they have developed is so delicious. Rice is, without a doubt, the staple and the primary means of preparation is putting a sauce over, but that is hardly the alpha and omega of the Indonesian kitchen. Tofu, tempeh and this wonderful sticky rice which is stored in a pocket of folded leaves introduce some wonderful textures and are freely added to various recipes, and these weeks have proven my first exposure to rice noodles, a tasty exposure to be sure. Of course the tolerance for heat is at an entirely different level than this northern Minnesota kid is used to, but the spice has been kept in check and been down right tasty. All this is not to disparage the rice and sauce style either. The Indonesians do some exceptional work with a mortar and pestle, especially where raw peanuts, chilis and garlic are concerned.

Of course, all that is not to say Indonesians do not have their culinary failings. First of all, to not have anything fried (goreng) with a meal is unusual, and this is not just a minute in hot olive oil. No, this is the submerged-in-vegetable-oil-for-fifteen-minutes-until-the- outside-is-crispy-and-inside-creamy fried. Maybe breakfast is fried bananas. With lunch and dinner you might enjoy some fried tempeh or eggplant as a side to the rice with sauce, a sauce which, more than likely, has at least one fried ingredient itself. For a snack, and even a topping at times, there are beef rinds. The Indonesians prefer to call them 'crackers.' (I'm actually not sure if that is the proper name, but they are basically pork rinds, just made from cow rather than pig. Eighty-eight percent Muslim population and halal and all that, you know.) To be fair, I had pork rinds exactly once before this, and they had the texture and taste of old Styrofoam. These at least are fresh and edible, but the idea of literal slivers of fried fat as a snack is still enough to make me roll my eyes. I guess these is to be expected in a country where I have yet to see an oven, and the tap water is not for drinking, thus making boiling a much less appealing option.

It is fascinating to me that Indonesians lack an American conception of "fast food." Of course KFC and A&W have made headway here (no McDonald's surprisingly enough) and maybe the people there eat in a on-the-move American style (I would not know as I have not been), but I just do not see people walking and eating here. Even the carts and their owners who prowl the streets with their meatball soup, the Indonesian equivalent of hotdog stands, will pull out a few stools if you buy something from them and wait patiently for you to finish and return them. One of the kids here told me that is because eating while standing, even if it is because all the chairs are taken, is rude. It is just amazing how well ingrained this attitude is.

All of this has amounted to a tremendously nice surprise. With zero exposure prior to my arrival, ignoring the surprisingly accurate Indonesian dinner we prepared to publicize my trip, this has all come as something completely new, and the formerly exotic, in this case meaning the exceptionally high-priced fruits at Safeway, are common here. Literally, I have enjoyed starfruit and Indonesian cherries, which probably go by some other name in the States, straight from the tree. I will miss that.

A Month in Jakarta: The traffic

While my pre-departure Indonesia research was disappointingly little, I did manage to catch one article that appeared on the front page of BBC News. It tended more towards the novelty aspect of journalism. To keep people from catching rides on the roofs of Jakarta's subway cars and subsequently falling to their deaths, guards were being ordered to spray a special colored solution on rule breakers, so they could be identified and fined later. I have yet to see this subway, but considering what I have seen of the traffic in Jakarta, that exterior seat was probably as safe, if not safer, than the roads.

Since making good my escape from rural Minnesota, I have seen some frightening traffic. The circle around the Arc de Triomphe and all of Istanbul rank high, but at least there was some vague conception of law there. Here, the only rule anyone seems to care for is stay on the left side of the road, and even that is fairly flexible. Fading across the centerline on major thoroughfares in heavy traffic is a common enough occurrence that it no longer draws my attention, and a motorbike may drive, as far as possible on the right, against traffic until the driver spots an opening large enough to cross on.

Passing on either the right or the left is no big deal and made all the more frightening by the plethora of slim vehicles which like to fill every possible gap and improve their position, regardless of dividing lines. Unless the nearest motorbike is 50 meters back, you can never just assume it is safe to go on a right-hand turn because they will make room to get by if they cannot get on the outside.

Instead of slowing at intersections, drivers just lean on the horn to warn others they are coming through. To say it is a change from Spokane where drivers would stop and wave the pedestrians across is an understatement.

The city seems to have accepted this state of affairs. In my near-two weeks here, I have only seen two traffic lights and cannot recall any stop signs. Rather than try to enforce the speed limit in residential areas, speed bumps are used a stronger reminder than signs. The motorbikes still skirt around their edges.

There is one odd thing about the traffic, the vehicles especially, in Jakarta which I would like to point out. Ignoring the obvious examples of the 15-person buses (vans) and banjajs (three-wheeled jalopies that pour blue smoke like a garden hose), there are no old cars. Everything is shiny and new. No rust stains or any of that. Seriously, it surprises me to see anything earlier than 2000. I imagine its because it takes a while for used cars to enter the system, and cars were just not that common a decade or two back. That or the income disparity is just that great. While the majority scrimp by buying fuel-efficient motorbikes, the upper crust buy a new car every other year. Really, I have seen families of four on a single motorbike and others packing tables on the things. I doubt the latter, though, because there are just too many of the things.

A Month in Jakarta: The only white guy

This month in Jakarta has provided me with a number of notable 'firsts.' It is my first trip across the Pacific. It is my first time south of the Equator. It is also my first time ever being in the minority for being white, and for the neighborhood I have been staying in, this particular minority is even smaller than the non-white communities in either Baudette or Spokane, both very heterogenous cities.

For the most part, this is not such a big deal, even if I stick out all the more for standing at least four inches taller than the average and having lighter hair. People just tend to stare or watch a little longer. Maybe ever other day, some random person who knows a little English will try it out on me. The first guy knew no more than basic pleasantries but was pleased enough that he could pull that off (and that I had to backtrack past him when the road ended shortly thereafter in front of someone's house). The second spoke fluently and with an Australian accent, which was a little off putting. It is to be expected, I guess, because you have to learn English from someone, somewhere, but it is still not what I first expect. British, maybe, but never Australian.

Sometimes, though, it is a little more irritating. Someone yells "Hey, mister," to see if you respond or calls "What is your name?" after you are far past because it took that long for them to work up the courage. It is an act of bravery rather than friendliness to try and draw my attention because, if I turn to look and reply, they are laughing with their friends and pulling away. Maybe my size is threatening or movies have given them outlandish ideas about violent whites. I do not know.

More irritating are the people who say bule (boo-LAY) as I pass by. I have been told it means Westerner and there is no insult in it, but to be picked out like that and commented on in the belief that I do not understand is not the most comfortable feeling. At some point, I want to start pointing at myself and nodding and saying bule, too, just to give them a little start.

I think what gets me about all this, considering the apparent lack of malice, is the feeling that I am being treated at these times as more of an amusement or curiosity than a regular person. Take the time I was riding the bus, which in Jakarta means a hollowed-out van with two parallel benches facing each other. I ended up next to a toddler and what must have been her grandfather. She silently stared at me, and with the way he looked across at me, I assume he was telling her something like, "He's not from around here. Maybe across an ocean or on the opposite side of Asia." It was harmless enough, even cute at the time as the there was no ill will in the man's face and, like I wrote, the kid was quiet throughout, but looking back now, they were definitely interested in me as something new and different.

There is a darker, far less amusing side to this that goes well beyond me. Not surprisingly, the developed world has a good handle on Indonesia. Visiting the VCD rental place one evening, the vast majority of the films were American and British, and the most prominent advertising campaigns are from the West and feature white models. Even the mannequins before clothing stores have a distinctly white look to them. At times, this is funnier. One girl told me after I visited her school that her friends said I am handsome. Then there are the less pleasant experiences. One of the boys said he was ashamed for having darker skin than me. My responses then were not the best, telling her to tell her friends they were wrong and telling the boy he did not want to look like me because I am disgustingly white, respectively, but they put me off balance. I guess white is the standard of beauty, and while I see no reason for people to always think they are beautiful, they should at least be comfortable with their appearance.

Being faced with all this, it is uncomfortable. Race is an issue that has never really cropped up in my life. The non-white community has always been small enough and never vocal enough that it just never came up, not that I would have cared. Among the many forms of identity politics and groups, race always ranked near the bottom for me because you could do nothing to change it. You just had to accept it and treat those with a different skin color fairly. Of course it has come up in the abstract, during English and history classes and tap dance most recently, but this is something different. It is a little shock, to find that this sort of thing matters and that the rest of the world does not agree with me on this. Perhaps this is part of the reason Westerners are invited here, to give the kids real exposure to the world outside Jakarta. I do not know, and I have little more to write, this is so outside of my experience. Maybe more later.

A Month in Jakarta: Raison d'Etre

I arrived in Jakarta to begin my on-site work at the International Humanity Foundation's orphanage on Monday. Perhaps you already know this through personal contact with me or this earlier post. Now seems like a really bad time to be considering my reasons for coming here. Last summer would have been a far better time to be having these thoughts, but I guess it is natural. Coming in, you have some hopes of how you will be received, what you will accomplish. Maybe these expectations are unconscious, or maybe you have been daydreaming about them. Regardless, they are there. Perhaps you believe that through brute kindness and good intentions, you will teach the children conversational English and open their eyes to what lies beyond Indonesia, altering the course of and immeasurably improving their lives in a single month. If you are not quite so starry eyed, at least you hope to make a difference, to believe that your presence and actions changed something for the better.

And then you arrive, and a short while later, reality takes over. The organization ran just fine without you and will continue to do so after you leave. There were other volunteers before you and there will be others after you, just as outgoing and friendly and helpful as you, if not more so. You are not indispensable. In all likelihood, it will be something if anyone there remembers you after you are gone.

This whole, "You are not making a difference (at least not a noticeable one)," thing struck me yesterday. In a wonderful example of futility, I was trying to teach a computer class to Indonesian kids whose English skills were lacking on American Windows machines with fritzy mouses. I was forced to physically open all the windows, make all the selections and press all the buttons and hope the children remembered exactly what I pushed because there really were no other options. Even more, the day's topic, which I learned mere minutes before starting, was "Print Area in Excel." The classroom had no printer, which just made the exercise all the more pointless. I know very well that Nicholas Negroponte and Seymour Papert would argue that simple interaction with a computer is enough for children, but there are few times in my life I have felt as useless as I did then.

What then is the point? If I doubt my ability to actually affect change, why then am I here, besides the fact this doubt did not appear until after my arrival? Because I think it's right, and doing the right thing is the only thing worth doing. It is right to try. It is right to care and to actually follow through, not just expressing it in some limp-wristed, "Ah, isn't that sad" way. It is right to break off from everything you are comfortable with and use without any real appreciation to see how you come out of it, to know you can do just fine without conveniences as basic as running drinking water.

If nothing else, this feeling of futility arose quickly. It may dissipate with equal haste, and I am certain I am doing no harm in being here. Next week I will be taking over some English classes, classes in which I feel much more comfortable in actually transmitting some form of information.

Retrospective

And a happy third year anniversary to this blog. It has been a long while since boredom during my senior year of high school first pushed me off in this direction. It has been cool, this opportunity to consider and dump my thoughts, preserving them for a second-look sometime in the future, and in all honesty, I have been surprised how long I have kept this thing alive. I always figured I would get bored with it someday. Fortunately (except for those who claim I think too much), that assumption has been shown to be wrong.

As a means of celebration, I offer my favorite posts from the intervening years to give you an idea of what has most stayed with me and still fascinates me. It saves you a lot of time from searching the archives yourself, I guess. Of course, any longtime readers who would like to offer their own favorites are welcome to, too.

Journey
The oldest of the posts, hailing from an era when rereading what I had just wrote was (more) rare, the idea remains solid. I could have developed it all a whole lot more, but I remain faithful to that central theme of the journey being of greater importance than the destination.

A Crude Life Philosophy and On thinking about yourself
Right here, these two posts demonstrate a large part of this blog's raison d'etre. It gives me an opportunity to see the evolution of my thoughts. Came pretty quickly after one another.

Animorphs
Looking back on the formative book series of my youth with a mature eye and still finding something worth anything in it. Cool. And remembering Marco's truck theft still makes me laugh.

Further thoughts on volunteering
This post was a revelation, and Mission:Possible itself, though I did not realize it then, marked a turning point in my life, the time when entering into social work of some sort after graduation first niggled into my mind.

On the morality of elliptical machines
Not linked to so much because I liked this post but because of the response from my friends who are incredulous that I can have an opinion on elliptical machines but not the upcoming election. I refuse to support any candidate until the end of October. There's plenty of time for things to get complicated.

A modest proposal as regards education
Possibly my most original idea yet. Now to get into Teach for America and implement it.

Running in winter
To change it up every once and a while, I write about an experience. This is one of the better ones.

Considering "Babel" and "Into the Wild"
If you let it, a movie can sneak up and rock you back. These two did that for me.

I love you
It's true.

Also, be sure to check back frequently over the next few days. I will be spending the next month in Jakarta, Indonesia working at an orphanage and teaching English classes. It will be my first time across the Pacific Ocean and south of the Equator. Should provide some good fodder for travel writing.

Rain on the river

Quite honestly, this is one of my favorite pictures. Certainly not without its flaws (I am fairly certain that is my shadow down the middle and the only reason the rock is there is to break up the scene, something which could have been more subtly and effectively accomplished with more thought), but there is such a rich texture to this river and a full range of contrast. The ripples on the river suitably set against the rough rock. I thinks it is a wonderful picture, even if it is just the appreciation of a moment, no greater philosophy behind it.

Conditions were just right for this too. It was a light summer rain, enough to be refreshing without being a downpour, and the clouds were just thin enough to provide ample light without glare on the water. I am unlikely to come across that again any time soon.

Too Much Information

In near record time, the Internet posting of the latest issue of Charter is up on Gonzaga's website. Here is my submission, "Too Much Information." In all honesty I do not like it that terribly much. This idea that information without action is useless seems common sense. There is no reason to submit an essay on it. Still, the editor was in need, and I was strung for ideas. Editor said she liked it though, and as I asked her to be honest, hopefully others will as well.

Should you have the time, other essays to check out include Emmett Tribolet's "The Logic of Kabbalistic Mysticism: Defining the Code," Stephanie Scarff's "Identity, Relationship and the Internet," Kaitlin Vadla's "Narrative in the Postmodern Age," and Eric Cunningham's "The Omega Point: When Information Becomes Eternity."

Andrea Crow, writer of "A Hard Habit to Break: Addicted to Information," will be the editor next semester and I a member of her team. The first issue will be on globalization. There is something to look forward to and submit to should you be of the Gonzaga persuasion.

Racism on stage

I never thought the class I would most explicitly deal with racism would be Beginning Tap Dance. I could very easily imagine it happening in English where so much of the theory seems interested in problematizing the Protestant, white male canon and drawing out marginalized voices, but gender has received greater play there than racism. Even in a hard science or philosophy class by means of mea culpas for granting legitimacy to theories of degeneracy and social Darwinism could I see racism cropping up before dance. Knowing what I do now, it should not surprise me that much. The origins of tap lie with the rhythmic dancing of African slaves in the Americas. Until suits and spats and class were integrated into the dance, clear references to clumsy, oafish slaves were a major component of performances and moves based on these slurs still remain in the canon.

The other thing is, within those other classes, we would have approached racism detachedly. We could have seen what these people in the past believed and wrote; said they were wrong, stupid, wrong, bigoted, wrong; and gone on with the lesson. In Beginning Tap, however, we created a piece which told the story of tap. You cannot just say then that racism and slavery are wrong but must show it too. Naturally, the question of how do we deal with this emerged, and we had to consciously deal with it.

Allow me to lay down the story from the beginning, to the end, in its entirety. The idea of a collaboration piece in which all of the dancers would perform in isolated segments according to a narrative was proposed early in the semester, and our instructor expressed her desire to integrate some sort of social statement on class or race issues or whatnot in it. That was the extent of it for a while since we got distracted by practicing for our '50's rock medley and Singing in the Rain. However, as the time of the recital grew closer and we still had not begun developing the piece, I grew nervous with how it might go down without time to re-evaluate or debate.

I am really uncomfortable with race issues. They are simply something that has not immediately appeared in my life. My hometown in northern Minnesota was homogeneous enough that not having a pure Scandinavian or Germanic heritage was enough to make you stand out, and diversity in ethnicity and race is a continuing problem at Gonzaga where roughly only 15% of the last few freshman classes have not been white. All I ever needed to learn about racism I learned from Sesame Street and believed it should be enough to simply accept that people are people, all bleed red and should be treated according to how they act and what they do, not the color of their skin. That is the solution, end of story, all that needs to be said regarding racism. Time to move on to ending poverty or some other problem. What good is it to keep harping on a past of injustices when we know better know?

I finally spoke with our instructor after class and expressed my concerns that we were not adequately prepared to deal sensitively and appropriately with this issue. Thankfully, she agreed with me. While not willing to scrap the idea, I gave her the name and contact information of one of the heads of Gonzaga's multi-cultural program. Eventually this turned up another multi-cultural director who agreed to help the class out. He originally came just to teach us the hambone but eventually became the reader of our story and accompanying drum player. I was content at this point. Accusations of insensitivity would be harder with him to vet our decisions.

The major problem emerged when the piece was finally assembled. Our instructor began the piece by describing how the masters took away the drums of the slaves to kill their culture. This was accomplished on stage by having a student whip the floor as the drum, played off-stage, faded out. Despite the class' discomfort with this, the strongest protests were not raised until the second-to-last rehearsal. Then our instructor added a white hood to the whipping student's outfit.

She gave two reasons. First, to shield him from any potential backlash for playing a disgusting part. Second, to draw the racism into the present, remind the audience that racism is not simply a vestige of the pre-Civil War era but was still present decades ago. This lead to near mutiny. I do not remember a single student in support of this in the least and the featured student tried to go over our instructor's head when she refused to bend. He was met with the same answer at all levels. Racism and a history of slavery are not something we should be comfortable with. Why should we present it in a less than uncomfortable way?

We ended up doing the piece as she wanted it, but that does not settle the question, unless your question was "Who would break first, instructor or students?" I still stand by my original conviction. People are people and should be treated according to who they are and should not be tainted by any stereotypes of any group they belong to. I think that is where the class was at. For us, "racism is bad" is redundant. We know that and have never been told differently. The challenge for us is to figure out exactly what is racism. Our instructors, however, remember when large segments of the American population and public officials were still fighting integration. A good number of people still had to be convinced then that blacks should share the front of the bus with whites, a far cry from affirmative action to be sure. Partially, I think their resistance to our protests was based on this experience of racism.

In general, I think our student understanding of racism is better. The debate whether racism is right is over. Racism is wrong, so let us treat one another equally. We do not need to keep every imperial colonial power, every act of oppression, every genocide in mind at all times. They were wrong, if not outright evil, and we must not repeat their mistakes. The past cannot be atoned for, but we can do better in the future because we realize we all deserve some measure of respect and kindness just for living and being human.

For the piece though, I have since come around to agreeing with our instructors. I am still wary of the hood since the Klan was formed after the Civil War, but cruel things are a part of tap's history. It did not begin with Shirley Temple and Fred Astaire but with slavery. I doubt anyone in the audience needed to be reminded that treating people as property was wrong, but to treat something so cruel in a way gentle to the audience and even us as performers would be disingenuous. If we are going to deal with evil, let us deal with it honestly and not as we would prefer to. Beware excess and hyperbole, but do not forget that whips were used.

Considering "The Cult of Sincerity"

Lately I have been discovering something about those movies which most resonate with me. These are not merely the films which grasp my attention with brilliant artistry or stick in my mind with a clever line but those which strike a deep chord and firmly wedge themselves in my mind, the movies which ask to be mulled over and actually emerge in my life. These are the movies whose characters fight this sense that things are not quite right, not just in their own lives but with all of society are off. The characters strike off on their own to try and discover the truth and the ways things ought to be. Fight Club and American Beauty did it in 1999, and Into the Wild went after it again almost a decade later in 2007.

The latest of these films to catch my attention is The Cult of Sincerity. Released early this April, much of the accompanying press has been about its unique method of release, straight to YouTube. You can find the entire film there, free of charge. Revenue is generated through a partnership with the music site Amie Street. Undoubtedly, this is a fascinating idea, and I hope it works because I would very much enjoy the opportunity more independent films receive a broader release. However, my concerns lie less with the economics than the film itself, something which has been passed by in favor of singing the praises of its new business model.

The titular Cult of Sincerity is an idea developed by the lead character, Joseph, at open-mic night. Driven by his parent's recent divorce, the twenty-something lashes out against the entire hipster generation and a bar full of them. Joseph calls them to task and disparages their philosophy, their fashion, their lack of caring in the strongest terms possible. He wants out. He wants something to believe in and care about. Once off the stage, he goes about it moronically.

At first Joseph strives for doing the right thing all the time and generally makes a nuisance of himself rushing to open doors and give directions. After getting arrested for turning a dime bag in to the police, he tries to apologize for everything and only ends up revealing his own ignorance in the process. At least, he is trying. The majority of his friends, stuck in their respective narcissistic, nihilistic, juvenile ruts, fare no better, and their scenes demonstrate excellently what Joseph is striving to throw off. I am not ready to say "Sorry for the atom bomb," but I am bloody well not planning on falling asleep playing Guitar Hero and waking up to it in the morning or shooting the edgiest, most hyperreal film yet.

Still, Joseph's desperate search for meaning and the right thing does bear some fruit by the end. With the help of a friend, whom he screws with something terrible, and a guy at the bar, Joseph bears witness to either the most beautiful thing you will ever see or the most stupid, love. It all depends on whether you believe in it. And that is the trick, is it not? If you are not willing to believe in it, it can never mean anything.

I do not dispute that Joseph is spot on in identifying the problem. Though his attack is broad and against a segment of the population that is not terribly hard to disparage, there is something vile in hipster culture. It neither celebrates nor honors anything except that which can provoke a response, and the response itself does not matter so long as it exists. I have no argument with his antidote either. The only proper response to apathy is passion. The only remaining problem is telling us exactly what love is and what it demands of us. Joseph certainly does things that look loving and knows an awful lot of other people pursuing the same thing in their own ways. Certainly some are better than others, but none seem quite right. The rest is up to us, I guess. Normally, I would rail against a work that merely asks the question and fails to provide much of answer, but it seems appropriate here. Like Joseph, we need to go out and discover it for ourselves. We need to know that it is right and not merely be told so.

As for the film itself, it is an enjoyable watch. Understandably low budget, it excels in creating an appropriate mood and tone through its location, soundtrack and acting, Joseph's roommate particularly impressing me. The writing is generally strong, not quite ready for an Oscar, but honest. The Cult of Sincerity's only severe weakness is its failure to distinguish itself artistically. Its shots, varied and engaging, feel as if they have been lifted straight from film school textbooks. Its creators are young though, and I anticipate seeing their later works as they mature and their unique voices develop. Then, of course, there is its true independent aesthetic, shot guerilla style and on-site. It makes for a much different experience than any sharp studio film or "independent" movie starring Nicole Kidman or George Clooney.

Interested in seeing it for yourself? Here is the link to the complete movie. Not ready to sit at your computer for the next hour and a half or want a better sense of whether it is worth your time? Here is the trailer. The cultofsincerity channel offers scenes of some of the more philosophically engaging moments and the other two links, in case you want them all in the same place or whatever.

Father and son

And here we have my accepted submission to this semester's Charter and the partner piece to "Off-balance," my last photo post. Content-wise, it is more of the same: a chuckle at how out of place these suburban types look at a downtown skatepark, but I find the photo's structure far more interesting here. It was simpler in the other, just a single, dominant subject, but a bit more is going on this time around. The two subjects, a father and son, are sitting in near identical positions on one of the park's walls, both looking towards the right, but a sharp division, several times repeated, separates them. The line of graffiti breaks between them, two poles stand in the middle and the background becomes considerably darker on the son's side. The presence of the convertible Beetle, half-hidden by the wall, gives a little more weight to the father's side, too. Still, there is a general similarity in the fore- and backgrounds that delivers a sense of unity that transcends these differences.

It is unfortunate then that I have no clue what this all leads to. There is a lot going on and I feel there must be some meaning that lies beneath it all, but I do not see it. I could suggest that the two are the same person. The son is the father a few decades younger, and the son will eventually grow into an adult and become just like his father. The father looks towards his past, the son towards his future and they find it in the same place, but that all sounds awfully pretentious. Ultimately, I guess this all just feeds into my friend Emmett's understanding that the artist is hardly ever aware of all that they put into their work, but that just raises the question "How much is a snapshot art?" art with me, a question I am not now prepared to answer.

If you have the time, it is worth kicking around and checking out the other submissions to Reflection. Personally, I recommend Anthony DeLorenzo's "Untitled," Martha Buttry's "Love Song to the Argentine Mullet," Sabrina Mauritz's "On my way to lunch," and Spencer Allison's "The Grieving Process."

Understanding art

While covering the new art exhibition at Gonzaga for the student newspaper, something fascinating happened to me. I had the opportunity to ask an artist whether my understanding of their work was right. Okay, I can think of things far more fascinating, especially for the bulk of any audience I might have attracted, but for a guy who has been bothered for some time now by questions of whether priority in artistic interpretation lies in the artist or audience, this is a big deal. Trust me.

To cut to the short of it and avoid the extensive narrative of multiple attempts to make contact with Ms. Ingalls, a tale replete with wrong phone numbers and conflicting schedules, my interpretation of her exhibit was right. She was celebrating everyday life in her paintings of domestic spaces and stovetops. Eggs on the stove? A bathroom several times removed from those found in Home & Garden? All common and beautiful and worthy of our attention. How much of that interpretation was purely mine is debatable as I did interview the museum's assistant curator and read the associated tri-fold first, but, when I asked whether she would agree with my interpretation, her agreement was enthusiastic. I must say, it is kind of a heady feeling to not merely believe but know you get it.

But then that feeling kind of fades. After all, part of the fun in art is arguing to the point of broken friendships whether the artist is offering a message of hope or despair, being satirical or serious. Debates revolving around art, unlike those on physics or political science or anything with numbers really, retain a good deal of subjectivity. When the majority of evidence is drawn from only your own opinions and experiences, no research or history necessary, anyone can play the expert, but if the artist goes ahead and judges which one of you is right, that all kind of falls apart unless you honestly feel like telling the artist they had no idea what they were actually creating. What's left then besides analyses of technique, placement in some historical context and relationship to other works by other artists, topics not so readily approached by lay folk because they actually require some level of knowledge?

A fair bit, I think. There are the piece's emotional effects and style of representation or lack thereof. It seems arrogant, too, to leave the analysis at such a broad level. Even if the artist's theory never develops a single iota in some new direction, every piece approaches it in a unique way that bears a little reflection. Okay, so these are all celebrations of the common and everyday. How is she demonstrating that in this glance of a friend's living room?

Art, in the words of my design professor, is not all about the message. Otherwise it would be an editorial. This should be a no brainer. There is this whole aesthetic component after all. Obviously though, I had problems with it, and I think others may as well. I blame abstract modern art, the sorts of works which first cause the audience to question what exactly they are seeing before any other response rises in their minds. When we are distracted by attempts to figure out who exactly is doing what to whom, questions of whether we even like the piece or not tend to take a backseat or shift quickly to the latter due to unnecessary complexity.

Art is meant to be enjoyed as much as it to be understood. I just needed a reminder of that and maybe some others do to.

Granted, this little bit of analysis all comes from a guy who has not yet gone back to the original exhibit.

Considering "Persepolis"

Beginning during my sophomore year, I took to decorating my room with newspaper clippings. Seemed appropriate for a Journalism major and, more importantly, was very cheap. You might even say it was free. Interesting articles and exceptional photographs from The Spokesman-Review and The New York Times have since graced my otherwise bare walls. Among them is a full-page advertisement for Persepolis, the film adaptation of Marjane Satrapi's autobiographical graphic novels. At the time, it represented more of an appreciation for the page design than any particular celebration of the film, which I had yet to see. Fortunately, however, Spokane's new non-profit, art house theater, The Magic Lantern, was able to bring it in for a few weeks, and I was finally able to see this remarkable French film, well deserving of its Academy Award nomination for Best Animated Feature but unfortunately placed against the equally excellent Ratatouille. Like few other films, Persepolis manages to successfully blend humor and drama and everything in-between, all while steadfastly remaining itself and not pretending to be anything else.

For an element that comes across so simplisticly in the stills, the animation really is brilliant. The black-and-white character designs are faithfully adapted from the original illustrations, no doubt due to the direct work of Satrapi on the film, but impressively infused with spirit by the animators. Motion is so beautiful in this film. Whether it is the young Satrapi practicing Bruce Lee's moves on a cousin or the history of Britain and the Shah re-enacted by marionettes, every movement is clean and distinctive. The serpentine attacks of two older women coming down on Satrapi for wearing Western clothing is a great example of the animators being able to bring personality into their characters so simply.

Which brings me to something curious, something I only realized several blocks after leaving the theater: no direct attacks were ever made upon religion. Given the strict, religiously-based laws of Iran's fundamentalist Islamic government and the prejudices of the Viennese nuns, this was quite the surprise. In fact, barring God's physical apparition a few times and the cross on the wall of Satrapi's room in Vienna, religion was hardly ever explicitly mentioned. Take this as you will, perhaps as a cynical attempt to not alienate potential audience members, but I understand it as an attempt to universalize the film. The problem is not religion but discrimination. Though religion is the particular form through which it appears in Satrapi's life, she does not confuse it for being the only source of oppression. Any force, any person which denies self expression and freedom based on gender or ethnicity or whatever is the problem.

Persepolis is a coming-of-age story. It follows Satrapi's life from child to adult, from Tehran to Vienna and back before the final journey to Paris. More than her failed romances, more than the fall of the Shah and rise of Islamic fundamentalism in Iran, more than anything else, it is her maturation that gives structure to this film. Everything else is just another challenge she must deal with as she grows into adulthood. It is a timely theme for me. I am 20 years old and a junior in college. I am well past the age of consent and a couple of years past when a parent or guardian needed to sign papers with me. I can sire children. Next year I graduate, but I do not feel like much of an adult. Not long ago in America and still in many nations, I would be providing for my own family by now, but I very much remain dependent on my parents. Neither am I giving much to society, except for whatever being a consumer counts for. What does it mean to be an adult?

For Satrapi, adulthood is taking for responsibility for yourself and defining yourself on your own. When she is young, so much of what Satrapi says and believes comes off as parroting. Cute, especially in the bandanna, but parroting nonetheless. In Vienna, she falls in with nihilists and, after them, hippies. Satrapi becomes the people who surround her, and when they fail her, she runs. Through her grandmother's admonitions though, Satrapi begins to become herself. She reads and finds her own reasons for her beliefs. She stops pretending to be French and proudly stands by her Iranian heritage. She stops wallowing in self-pity and faces challenges rather than skirting them. The movie ends with her divorce and flight to Paris. By then has learned all she can from her family and leaves to stand on her own. Then she is an adult.

I do not agree wholly. Undoubtedly, these are good things, self-responsibility and self-definition, but their attainment alone is not enough to make one an adult because an adult is a member of a community. You do not become an adult in isolation but amongst other, through helping them on their own paths to fulfillment or adulthood or whatever. At some point, one must pass the lessons they have learned on to others, lead them further on. Then again, as already written, I am no adult myself and hardly in a position to be defining it, whatever inklings I might have. And not to appear too harsh to Ms. Satrapi, perhaps this film is Satrapi's lesson and its transmission.

Whether this assessment be true or not, it is a film with a few things to say about a few important things: adulthood, freedom, love. It is worth a see and a thought or two. Maybe even a discussion. At the very least, a blog post.

Do-It-Yourself Funerals

Latest issue of Charter, Gonzaga's premier journal of scholarship and opinion, went online just recently, and here is the link to my submission, Do-It-Yourself Funerals. Still doubt my humor chops, but I sincerely did not want to write anything mopey for this issue whose theme was 'Death.' Fine essays, including investigations of the philosophy, science and religious aspects of death, are all present, so be sure to take your time while there.

I love you

As of late particular friends have been pestering me about this, that never say "I love you." This is not entirely true. I end most every e-mail and Skype call with the sister or parents or grandparents with that. I just do not say it to aforementioned friends.

Now, assume that I am mature enough to not squinch my face up and stick my tongue out when love is mentioned and can differentiate between romantic, friendly and every other form of love that English has compressed into a single, unwieldy, awkward word. This knocks down one obvious out and explanation for my actions, and as I do care very much for my friends, this has undoubtedly contributed to friends' accusations that I am either emotionally stunted or very distant from such feelings. Here is the deal.

I posted on the subject of love years back and still believe in what I wrote, that love is sacrifice of the highest order, and before I give any verbal indication that such an incredible relationship exists, I want to know that it is true and want to be precise. My actions towards my friends thus far, which consist of little more than hanging out and doing stuff together and whatnot, have, in my understanding, indicated nothing more than modest sacrifice, nothing greater than friendship. To say, "I love you" only to later find myself unwilling to make the appropriate sacrifice when it comes down to brass tacks is harsh and even cruel.

There is a way out of this. "I love you" is not a statement describing an already existing and demonstrated relationship but a promise. While we may not have been put up against the wall and forced to prove who it is we ultimately care about and will sacrifice ourselves for, to say "I love you" is a promise that we will decide for the other. But this bothers me. As I often so often heard and read, love is not a game. Quite the opposite, everything I thing have heard and read suggests that love is a big deal, too big a deal, mayhaps, to be promised to any extent.

A problem emerges. What are we left with then? We are not all the protagonists of romantic comedies and, when there is no other option to get in touch with our one and only, cannot demonstrate the depths of our love by stealing an airplane, thus getting over our fear of authority and heights, parachuting into Yankees stadium, thereby disrupting the World Series, and then standing up to whichever steroid-enhanced and rage-filled player comes to physically protest our action with a bat in hand. In fact, it is very likely that the brass tacks and hard decisions will never come. Our lives will progress from birth to death and the circumstances never demand anything so great of us. That may even be preferable because, really, even if the right sacrifice is made, something still had to be sacrificed and it is probably better that no one had to sacrifice anything at all in the first place. If that is the case, all that we have are the small things, preparing a special meal at the end of a strenuous day, simply talking, really listening, to demonstrate our love.

Maybe then love and the indicator that is "I love you" are habits in line with Aristotle's virtues. We practice the little, daily sacrifices because that is all we can do until they become so a part of our being that to do otherwise, even when the situation is much more drastic than stopping on the way back from work to pick up a special book the other has been looking forward to, is near inconceivable. Then a loving relationship is the one where not doing the selfish thing requires conscious thought and action because they have become so unnatural.

Now I must ponder whether my relationships are as such.

Off-balance

Know what this blog has been lacking in for the past few months? Pictures by me. Know why? Because Mr. Hard Disk who lived in my computer decided to make friends with Ms. Defect, never considering his responsibilities to protect the pictures Dame Hard Drive carried. Their loss presented a critical blow to the posting of my pictures to Spice of Life, that is until I remembered I had posted all my decent shots to Facebook and could just pull them from there to post here. Hurray for that.

I am fond of this picture, less for the aesthetic properties, which I have attempted to draw out in most of my other pictures, than the message I was trying, and feel I succeeded, to communicate. The young skateboarder is a little out-of-focus and his position and the angle may not be the most dynamic, but perfecting these was not so interesting to me as the theme of this picture. What attracted me to him, his friend and his father as subjects were just how ridiculously out-of-place they looked at this skatepark, these suburbanites spending an afternoon at a park where chain-smokers next to their beater cars at the opposite end appear to be dealing drugs.

Obviously, the kid is not the most comfortable on his skateboard. A far sight better than his off-camera friend, the subject is still struggling to maintain his balance in simple forward motion, no tricks yet. His father, also off-camera but included in another picture I plan on posting, is sitting next to his shiny white convertible Beetle. Never thought of the Abercrombie & Fitch crowd as one interested in graffiti either. The chance of getting paint all over your too-expensive T-shirt cannot be appealing. For me, his off-balance stance is simply the physical representation how disconcerting this all must be.

Considering the 3. Kammerkonzert des Bayerischen Staatsorchester

Studying in Munich, as I wrote earlier, was an opportunity to be "shook up" and break out of nasty old habits, like those which kept me back from trying those high culture things, i.e. visiting art museums and attending orchestral performances. Back in the States, I was holding back from them, waiting to take a class or read a book or something which would prepare me to more fully appreciate them when I finally got around to it all. Screw that in Munich. The city has two freaking opera houses, three orchestras, four world-class art museums and a not inconsiderable number of galleries and live music venues. My next chance at these was not going to come for years, and I was not going to waste an opportunity like that. Thus I ended up at one of the Bavarian State Orchestra's chamber concerts.

Interestingly enough, the Mozart piece which opened the evening, Quintet for piano and winds K. 452, was my least favorite. It was pretty, yes, but there was no excitement, no spirit to it. Movie reviewers attack superior actors by saying they "phoned in their performance." That is what this quintet felt like, Mozart phoned it in. The next two, Franz Danzi's Wind Quintet Op. 56, No. 2 in G-minor and Paul Taffanel's Wind Quintet, were easily my favorites. Danzi's brought to mind a stroll through the fields and Taffanel's hinted of a love story. The final piece, Sextet in Adaptation for Piano and Wind Quintet (sorry but the Internet fails me on this one) by Bohuslav Martinu was a strange one to me, employing on an off-putting dissonance, all the harsher in comparison to the more unified sets which preceded it.

And those are my thoughts on the performance. For a concert that clocked over two hours, that is not a tremendous amount of writing, especially what I have pulled off much more for shorter movies with much less acclaim surrounding them, but this is what it is: a beginning. At some point, if I want to make progress, I really ought to read some music theory and the like, but for now, I am content to reflect on that music I hear, to search out new stuff and try to understand it in my own situation.

Where this gets interesting is the minor controversy, which erupted yesterday and revolves on a review my friend Aaron Brown recently posted to his blog Fifty-Two Tuesdays. In brief, for those who do not care to click the link and come to their own conclusions first, Aaron reviewed the Get Set Go album Sunshine, Joy & Happiness: A Tragic Tale of Death, Despair, and Other Silly Nonsense. About a week later, Eric Summer, the band's viola player, gave a scathing point-by-point response, boiling tar scathing. Summer's rage can be divided into two camps: rants against against grammatical errors, which really smack of hypocrisy when Summer is confronted with a spelling mistake of his own and sarcastically replies that his own credibility is now shot, and raves that Aaron lacks the musical understanding to comprehend the complexity of Get Set Go's music.

"What qualifies one to be a reviewer?" is the question that finally arises from all this. For better or worse, I just reviewed a concert which I bloody well know that I lack the education to properly do, but is a degree in music necessary before one can offer a respone? I have heard some question the role of the movie critic because their experiences and very profession cause them to approach movies completely differently than most Americans and thus leave the theater with wildly different opinions. On this point, maybe what we need, and the Internet is certainly the avenue for more than enough of this already, is a greater opportunity for the non-professional critic to offer their response to art, one that can actually claim to speak for the layman. I would also like to offer one other suggestion. Only one other because this is a topic worthy of its own post. While I am not yet sure whether the ideal of a review or criticism should be to confront the art on its own terms, it should not be out of the question for a review to be approached on its own terms, as well. I was not looking to do anymore than share my simple response to it and give myself a foundation to begin a greater exploration of music. Would it be right for Mozart or Martinu to come back from the dead and bash me for my one-sentence declarations on their works?

Kudos, though, to Aaron for getting someone to pay attention and responding with a measure of tact. And fie on Summer for responding so childishly. Actually, a child would probably respond better. More like an emo teenager, one who whines that no one understands him.

Considering "Into the Wild"

One of the (admittedly weaker) reasons I believe in God is this unshakable sense that someone has been and is still screwing with me. All these coincidences keep popping up in my life, and I cannot help feeling that were I a little bit smarter, I could put it all together. There has to be a reason my Zen-Mediation instructor went off on mysticism for the first time last semester literally the day before I was to give a presentation on Sufism, the mystic branch of Islam. A push towards something or pull away? I do not know. Like I said, not smart enough. But, once I figure that and all the others out... I do not know that either. Maybe I will have won at life and will receive a free pass into heaven or something similarly cool.

Into the Wild, based upon the true Jack Krakauer account of the final two years of Chris McCandless' life, is just the latest in those coincidences. Let us begin with the clearest. The doomed protagonist and I share a first name. His estimated date of death (because he died alone) is August 18, the same as my birthday. But let us be honest as well. These similarities are shallow, nothing more than attention grabbers. To remain focused on them would be no different than those kooks searching for something behind the fact that both John Wilkes Booth and Lee Harvey Oswald are both referred to by all three of their names. What really matters and draws Chris McCandless and myself together across the years is the words that spill from his lips and into his journal. "I read somewhere how important it is in life not necessarily to be strong but to feel strong. To measure yourself at least once. To find yourself at least once in the most ancient of human conditions. " "I want to be all the way out there. On my own. No map. No watch. No ax. Just out there. Big mountains, rivers, sky. Game. Just be out there in it." I wish I could come near that passion and eloquence.

I wish I could actually do it too, make a clean break with society to live alone and deliberately in the wilderness, but that is where Chris McCandless and I ultimately differ. He went out and did it. He stopped playing along with the rules which underly modern American life, which most of us never question, even if we happen to recognize their existence. Rather than go on to graduate school or pursue a career, he donated his entire savings to Oxfam and took off on a two-year journey in the early '90's, one that took him from South Dakota to Mexico and culminated in four months in the Alaskan wilderness where he eventually starved to death. McCandless was an idealist, unwilling to compromise the rightness of his journey to the real. Even better, he actually did what he believed in.

What does this all mean? If I grant that coincidence can be more than a number of random variables coming together at the opportune moment, and I do, with what did I leave this film? A chance to see the path less taken. If I have not made this clear enough yet, I apologize. I respect McCandless the man and his actions immensely. Maybe I could have been proud of myself if I were to do what he did, but after seeing this, I am not so sure. For sure, what he did took courage. Not just anyone takes on the Alaskan wilderness with 30 pounds of equipment and 10 pounds of rice with no safety net, but it takes a massive level of selfishness too. Some allusions are made to his distaste for apartheid, not particularly unique or difficult since I cannot remember the sales of "Maintain Apartheid Forever" stickers being particularly high, but instead of catching the next flight to South Africa or Washington, D.C., he chose to live for himself. Forget others. All that mattered in the end for McCandless was that he lived the life he wanted to.

Furthermore, McCandless ran not only from middle-class family and the consumerist life which awaited him after graduation but poverty and human misery, too. A year into his journey, McCandless checks in for a night at a Las Vegas shelter but picks right up and leaves that very evening after wandering the streets, unable to bear what he sees, and pushes harder still to make Alaska. That he had incredible passion and ambition cannot be disputed. What is disappointing is that he turned it all toward himself. He could have been great but died young and without reason. If you do not want to deal with possibilities of what may have been, realize that he hurt his family. Not on the best of terms with his parents, McCandless never told them of his plans or once contacts them. More unforgivable though, he never tells his sister either, one whom he supposedly loved dearly. They knew nothing of his fate, whether to hold onto a hope of his survival or until a call came in mid-September to inform them his body had been found. McCandless is someone to respect but not to emulate. I do not want to be him.

Make no doubt, this is an excellent movie, and were it released in any other year, it would have received more awards attention than it ended up with. Its only two Academy Award nominations went to Hal Holbrook as Best Supporting Actor and Best Editing. Both well deserved, but strong cases could be made for Emile Hirsch in the lead role, who has been a pleasure to watch since The Girl Next Door; Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam on the soundtrack; Sean Penn as the director; and even Best Picture. The movie is deftly made, and there are no weak links, except for those who demand constant action and find the original Die Hard a little slow with too low of a body count. Obviously, the movie centers on McCandless, but the ensemble of people he meets on his travels, both whose lives are touched by him and who shape him, is given due care. No matter their screen time, genuine depth is given to each of them. No stock characters here, and the landscape cinematography is simply brilliant. It is worth a little look-see, and you can come to your own conclusions towards Chris McCandless, a wake-up call to one's own squandered existence or a warning or something else entirely.

Studying abroad

Tomorrow marks my third full week back in the United States after five months abroad in Munich. Thankfully, the transition back has gone remarkably well. Jet lag was not an issue, and neither was homework, a bit of a surprise since I returned a week after classes at Gonzaga had already started. Of course, catching up and getting settled back into life in America has kept me busy and reconnecting with friends even more so. The result of this is that I have spent little time reflecting back on my months in Europe, and this bothers me. Five months in a foreign land, surrounded by a largely alien language, different culture and apart from most everything I was familiar with? Kind of a big deal, I think. Now is the time to start taking that on, a time to begin considering what those months meant to me, how they changed me.

But first things first. Why did I go? Looking back now, it seems kind of inevitable and as though I never made the conscious decision to trade Gonzaga for Ludwig-Maximilian-Universität for a semester. It begins with my choice to take German as my foreign language requirement at Gonzaga. When my application asked what languages I was interested in, I checked German even though I had studied French for four years in high school. My grandparents emigrated in the '60's, and I thought it might be nice to be able to speak with them in their native tongue and those relatives (e.g. all of them) who stayed behind. From that point on, there was no detour on my path to Munich. By the beginning of my sophomore year, it was already time to start considering whether I wanted to study abroad. Why not? A goodly number of my friends were taking advantage of the chance, and I thought it might be fun. There was never any doubt in my mind that a German-speaking country would be my destination since to wimp out on Oxford or something would be an affront to my two years of study, and once the Munich program was suggested by my German instructor, I never looked at another program. Like I wrote earlier, there was no deliberate thought on the subject at any point. The pieces all just fell into line. Perhaps this should worry me, such a light approach to a major matter, but I have come around to agreeing with Mary Schmich. "Your choices are half chance. So are everybody else's." The amount I do not expect and cannot prepare for will always trump that which I can. No use worrying about it too much.

What was I looking for in this experience? Still not quite sure on that one. To get better at German for sure, but the language does not play any specific role in my future plans, as fluid as they are now. To see Europe and its great cities, too, but no plans were made before my departure at the end of August, everything arranged across the ocean. Certainly not to advance on my path to a Journalism major. Did not even take a media studies class over there. Mostly, I think, I was looking to get shook up. I was comfortable at Gonzaga, and it was time to see what happened when I threw myself into a situation I was not quite prepared for (God knows two years of college German is not enough to get by), break myself off from the familiar and watch the consequences. Cheated on that one a bit. A friend from Gonzaga participated in the same program, and we hung out a good deal, even more after the Internet in my room went down.

This is a big subject, and this is only a small part of the experience. I will, undoubtedly, write still more on it. For now, though, the only way I am going to get through it all is piece by piece.

And here is the first of those pieces. To be blunt, my academic education in Munich was not of the highest caliber. Ultimately, I learned German. All of my classes, barring the independent study of Locke's "A Letter Concerning Toleration," were held in German, and the academics were not that rigorous, except my term papers. Two classes were devoted solely to the language. Anything I learned from History of Germany Since 1945 came from reading the texts because the first half of the three-hour classes were student presentations on the assigned readings and the second half was the instructor waiting for us to ask questions on them. Weltreligionen im Religionunterricht was fun, but what was taught about the major world religions I generally already knew from earlier readings. Theorie und Praxis der Zen-Meditation was quite literally an hour of meditation preceded by the reading of a koan and a little yoga.

It is a good thing then that there is more to education than what you learn from books and lectures. I planned my own trips in their entirety and (far more difficult and resulting in failure far more often) planned for the arrival of friends. I learned a little of art simply by visiting as many galleries and museums as I could stomach and got better at meeting new people and accepting hospitality. These are all good things for sure, life lessons after a style, but they dwarf in comparison to the big one.

From the onset, I knew I would only spend a single semester in Germany, and I lived every day with that awareness. I was living in Munich on borrowed time, and I knew it. If an opportunity presented itself, I took it because these chances were not going to crop up again. For as much as I despise Harris' The End of Faith, he does make one decent metaphor. We are all living with an incurable disease that will knock us dead and off this mortal coil, and we do not know when. That is life. I just faced that on a smaller scale in Europe but was graced with the knowledge of when it would all end. Now I want to live my life that way. To go out and do something worth remembering and not pass up an opportunity for something new. Quit using homework as an excuse not to spend time with friends and stop spending hours asking "So, what do you want to do?" instead of doing something.

For that alone, I am euphoric I spent that time across the ocean. Really, it is not any sort of great revelation. Good grief, Tim McGraw sang "Live Like You Were Dying." To actually experience it, though, is something else.

McGlobalization

The latest issue of Charter, Gonzaga's journal of scholarship and opinion, one which I hope to serve as editor for next year, has been posted online. My essay considers the best way to discover a culture through the mostly standardized cuisine of McDonald's, and there are plenty of other essays worth your time. Particular favorites of mine include those by Mallory Ferland, Ann Foreyt and Rebecca Schwartz.

Considering "Mulholland Dr."

I once heard that James Joyce wrote with the intention that, in order for one to understand his works, the reader would have to devote their lives to them. If you think you understand it on the first go around, you are wrong. Mulholland Dr.? Not so different except, assuming you come to it blind and blissfully unaware, you will very quickly realize that you have no idea what is going on. Probably still true after the fourth viewing though you might finally be able to establish a chronology and distinguish between dream/nightmare/fantasy/psychotic episode and reality at that point, though everything else will continue to evade you, all of which makes for a rather interesting contrast to Babel which I had watched the night before. Against the example of Crash, I lauded Babel for not putting it all on the surface, forcing the audience to strain itself a little. To say that Mulholland Dr. strains the audience is like saying a five-minute time-out in the corner is the same as an hour of waterboarding. The initial viewing is punishing in the extreme. There is something that resembles a plot as an aspiring Canadian actress, freshly arrived in Los Angeles, tries to help a wandering amnesiac understand why she has mad stacks of money and a blue box in her purse, but that is frequently interrupted for scenes of completely unrelated characters doing completely unrelated things. A man discovering the monster of his nightmares behind a dumpster, a director strong-armed into casting a specific actress, a hitman bumbling the job and lesbian sex all just kind of happen. Then, with only a half hour separating you from the end, you have to throw all of what you just saw out the window because in a single moment, all those basic elements like plot and character relationships and identities, which you thought you were getting a grip on, are radically altered or straight-up traded for something new. If I had popcorn, I would have started throwing it at the screen and then proceeded to pick it all up and give it another toss because that would have been more worth my time than continuing to stare.

The problem, though, is Mulholland Dr. is an exquisitely crafted film. A compiled score of 81% on Rotten Tomatoes and user of rating of 8.0 on IMDB do little to suggest otherwise, and everything is so precise and absurd that there had to be something behind it all. All of my frustrations were only compounded by the constant feeling that I was so close to understanding it, just a few points too stupid. Other people have had this same feeling but have taken the next logical step in trying to make sense of the whole thing. Sites like Lost on Mulholland Dr. are a testament to this, and I am prone to agree with their deep, involved analyses, some undoubtedly taking more time and effort than a few term papers of mine.

Ultimately, one's response to Mulholland Dr. is dependent upon the attitude coming into it. For a lazy Friday evening with the friends, there is nothing worse. For those willing to fully immerse themselves in it and spend their life trying to understand it, maybe it will catch, but I question that decision. After all the hours of watching, reading and thought,what does Mulholland Dr. offer? It contains no great commentary on life, the universe and everything or the state of modern society. It is no myth the audience can set its life in relation to and there are no heroes one can aspire to be.

Ultimately, it is a psychological profile of Naomi Watts (whose ability to so completely disappear within the three characters she plays cannot be celebrated enough). At the end of it all, we have nothing more than an intimate understanding of a construct of the director's imagination. No matter how subtle and well-developed, she is nothing compared to the infinite depths of the person we pass on the street or sit next to in class. Does Mulholland Dr. allow us to better relate to them in the least? Maybe if they put the same amount of time into it as well, but for the most part, I doubt it.

But that is a terribly functionalist approach to it all and calls into the question the validity of all art, not a position I am eager to adopt.

Considering "Babel"

I had wanted to see this movie a long time before I came across it while flipping through a friend's DVD collection. Not really sure where that desire came from. Its compiled rating on Rotten Tomatoes is not so great, though it did receive nominations for a variety of awards including the Oscar for Best Picture (lost to The Departed) and even won a few of them. More than anything else, I think it was its association with the explosion in Mexican films that occurred that year. Having only seen Children of Men myself (still need to get my hands on Pan's Labyrinth) that movie alone is enough to make me see anything remotely related to it.

As a result, I was not really sure what I was coming in to except for mild memories of reviews comparing it to the previous year's Best Picture Crash through their wide-spanning ensemble casts and fractured storytelling. Let me make this clear now. Babel is better than Crash. That's no knock against the latter, a movie which I very much enjoy and appreciate, but for the most part, everything it has it puts out there. There is not much to sift through because the majority lies on the surface. Babel requires digging and reflection, and its raw emotional intensity matches that of Crash with little difficulty.

Babel hits the fundamentals beautiful. Acting across the board is excellent, the no-names, even through sign and foreign languages, matching perfectly against the headlining Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett. The music, simple but evocative and so very appropriate, is largely kept in reserve and only employed to the greatest effect, especially during the club scene. The cinematography, beautiful. The frequently employed jump cuts, powerful. On these basic, foundational elements there is nothing to fault Babel on.

But, to be a truly great movie, one that attains the level of masterpiece, it needs a similarly striking theme, and it is here that Babel takes a brilliant turn. For a movie that literally spans continents and arrives at a time when globalization has transformed and raised the stakes on every political issue, it remains intensely personal, not concerned with governments and society but the individual people doing the best they can in their little, daily lives. The narrative thread, effectively relating how a Japanese hunter's gift leads to the deportation of an illegal immigrant, is there only as an excuse to tell the nearly simultaneous stories of a Moroccan family, a troubled American couple touring in Morocco, a deaf Japanese girl looking for sex and a Mexican nanny forced to bring her young charges to her son's wedding. And what do we find in these distantly related stories? That all these people all are forced to put up with the same trash. They misunderstand each other. They bumble into one another in their search for intimacy and connection. Things get out of control, and people lie and make mistakes. But we all share in the same hope too. At the end, someone puts their arms around you. They show they love you. It does nothing to make the situation any better, but then, at least you know you can get through it.

The message of Babel, in spite of everything it seems to suggest in its scope, is really no greater than "You are not alone in your suffering," whether in the midst of the worst of it or when help finally arrives, sought or not. Just watch the movie. It gets intense at times and will make you uncomfortable, but it is very much worth it.

Neo-Atheism

If you want to be a jerk about it but gain a pretty good understanding of what neo-atheism is (so named and anecdotally described in this article by Wired Magazine, the same which introduced me to the movement), replace ‘neo’ with ‘fundamentalist.’ No different than Islam or Christianity, atheism has accrued fundamentalists of its own, and considering their rather antagonistic viewpoints, I have always found it amusing just how much of the language and techniques the neo-atheists have appropriated from their religious fundamental brethren. You get the same talk of the imminence of the end times, couched in language of nuclear holocaust rather than Revelation, and the same belief that their position is not only right, which is really not so uncommon even among the moderate, but that it is the only position worth having. Everyone not a part of your camp must either be persuaded from their path or is a potential threat. There has to be a video on YouTube somewhere of someone pointing this parallel out to Dawkins or Hitchens, and I have to see their response

This post is not intended as a refutation of neo-atheism. While I do believe that its most vocal proponents have gone off the deep end in their extreme rejection of everything religious and the possibility of any good coming from it, I understand why people choose atheism. I also know why I do not. Someday I may post on my thoughts on the subject, but that day is not today.

Rather, I prefer now to write on something which occurred to me since completing an essay comparing John Locke’s A Letter Concerning Toleration and Sam Harris’ The End of Faith. As one may guess from the titles, Locke and Harris have differing views on the subject of tolerance, Locke believing that so long as religious practices do not intrude upon the civil interests or otherwise muscle in on the state’s territory it must be afforded tolerance. At the other end of the spectrum, Harris insists that religion, as the prime source of pain and suffering in this world and throughout history, must be eliminated.

The thing is, their underlying, fundamental goal is not so different. Both are members of the Enlightenment tradition and anticipating truth and a communal utopia through argument. Locke has faith that “truth certainly would do well enough, if were once left to shift for herself,” and Harris believes that civil society is “a place where ideas, of all kinds, can be criticized without the risk of physical violence,” and where the expectation is that only the truth is able to survive the ensuing rigorous debate.

What is with that? That was the question my professor posed to me after we went through an early draft. My answer after a great deal of thought (not in that same meeting but a month or so afterwards)? Harris is trying to resuscitate the Enlightenment project of achieving a universal Utopia through argument and discussion since postmodernism came through and did a hatchet job on the veryidea of there even being a firm ground from which we can judge the rightness or wrongness of different ideas. First, he asserts materialism and the related ability to objectively quantify and measure everything as this common ground. Second, he tries his hardest to tear down religion, something which I find largely dependent upon one’s subjective experience of the spiritual, because anything relying upon the individual experience is a friend of postmodernism.

I like to think of Harris’ philosophy in this context as the Enlightenment project with teeth. And guns. Lots of guns. The gloves of Harris’ Enlightenment have come off. It cannot wait for everyone to realize that something is true or false. It needs to make that decision for them.

It is a pity. I like to think that people can still be trusted to come to the appropriate conclusions on the big issues by themselves.

Considering "Tanguera"

Night before my pan-European Christmas vacation began, I caught Tanguera, a modern musical that manages not to be based on a book written by Hugo, Eliot or Maguire; second-class movie; or some band looking to provide the next Mamma Mia!, on opening night at the Deutsches Theater. Ever since deciding that a Dance Minor would be fun and subsequently discovering that I could not actually complete it, I have been getting more into social dance, especially Argentine Tango for its music and moves that do not require planning five steps ahead. Thus, when the advertisements were screaming “Das tango Musikal direkt aus Buenos Aires,” my attention was rather effectively caught.

Certainly no intellectual heavyweight questioning the postmodern condition or anything of that sort, it was a story of love at first sight, love thwarted, love fought for and love immortalized. In short, it was fun and effectively so. I never fidgeted and was quite amazed to realize when I left that the running time pushed two hours and catching the familiar sounds of “Pena multa” in such a production was a pleasure.

The story. Dock Worker falls in love with Girl as she comes off the boat. Her returned affections, accompanied by a spotlight and the freezing of all other players on stage, are clear. Unfortunately, Local Brothel Owner, identified by his wearing of a hat, is also intrigued by Girl and takes her away. Dock Worker, disliked by Brothel Owner, is disturbed by this, and his increasingly violent attempts to regain Girl propel the rest of the story on through the building action to the climax.

And all of this, excluding the briefest of Spanish prologues and epilogues, is performed entirely without words, only dance, specifically, the titular Tango. When love is in the air, they tango. When they wash their laundry, they tango. When they fight, they actually tango. When Girl is attempting to decide between the true love of Dock Worker or moderately glamorous though mostly seedy life offered by Brothel Owner, they make their respective arguments through a threesome tango, one of the best moments in the entire musical.

One gripe. Part of the fun of musicals I have always understood, if my friends and their immense appreciation for Wicked and Rent is any indication, is the ability to participate, mostly through the singing. As already mentioned, the lack of vocals in this musical (does is still count as such then?) is not so possible with Tanguera. I guess I can just play some of the classics constantly on my laptop or tango my way to class. Unfortunately as my companion for the evening, who ought to know considering his month-long stay in Buenos Aires to practice the only dance I have referenced in this entire post, noted, none of the moves in Tanguera are practically possible. Of course they were choreographed and practiced until the actors were twitching the moves out in their sleep. It is just kind of disappointing when I cannot take anything from it.

Dachau

This post has been a stumbling block for me. In the same way that I had to visit the longest-running Nazi concentration camp once I learned it was only twenty minutes from Munich, I have had to write about it. Obviously, that has been difficult. I went to Dachau over a month ago, and this post only arrives now. There is a lot about the experience I do not know how to put into words, much less have any explanation as to why. What exactly was this compulsion to visit Dachau, for example? If I figure the answer to that one out, I will let you all know. It is intimidating, too. I have read that the Holocaust is the historical event for every generation since. Everything comes back to it. To write about a visit to a concentration camp is to try and capture the essence of the Holocaust, and I am hardly up to that task. But now I just need to push through and get something down.

First and lasting impression? It was big, and it was empty. Granted, my hometown is small, but it would be no trouble at all to gather all its citizens into the central grounds. Movies like Schindler’s List and La Vita è Bella are so personal that you lose any sense of the scale of the Holocaust. Yeah, the families portrayed suffered everything, but you could fit a lot of those families in Dachau and it was hardly the largest of the very many camps. What remains is not even the entirety of the camp. A generous portion of it, including the ovens, is now streets or residential.

There were several memorials in the camp. At the far end, past the lines marking the rows of demolished prisoner housing, were three religious memorials. You want irony? The Catholic memorial was finished first, pushed through by a bishop who survived and dedicated a good decade before the Protestant one, which still came a few months before the Jewish memorial was finished and dedicated. At the other end, closer to the museum was some art: rough iron bodies at harsh right angles and triangles surrounding a chain. A short distance from there was a simple stone memorial with the words “Never again” repeated in three languages.

Reflecting on his own visit, my friend Emmett wrote that no memorials were necessary, the dry buildings were enough. I disagree. In a very literal sense, the buildings were memorials themselves. They had to be reconstructed because they were so shoddily built, but they were not enough. I guess I expected something a bit more sinister. If not the overt evil of skulls on pikes outside Minas Morgul than at least the sterile, technological dread of the Death Star, but Dachau was nothing worthy of note itself. There was no aura of dread around the ground, and even if the ovens remained, I doubt they would have warranted a second look. Without the walls cutting the camp off from the surrounding town, the officers’ and prisoners’ quarters would fit right in with the neighborhood homes which would inevitably grow up around them.

That is where I find the great horror of the Holocaust, I guess. It was not the loss of life, as high as it was. Were life so sacred, war itself would have been ended long ago, and there would be no arguments about capital punishment because it would not exist. No, I believe our inability to escape the Holocaust is how pedestrian it was. There was no frenzy or insane rage. The extermination lasted far too long for that to be an honest reason. It was a job that the Nazis convinced themselves needed doing, and they went about it without any special interest or passion.

I think I needed to visit Dachau to realize this. Yes, there are the books to read and films to watch, and they are necessary because the extent of it all is not contained in this single camp. Still, to actually see it is something else. The Holocaust and very notion of genocide borders on the unreal for this middle-class kid from small town Minnesota. I can imagine all the students at my university dead from gas and then cremated and then multiply that number by 1,500, but to actually believe it happened is near impossible. That is what the visit was for.

Here is Emmett’s post.

Considering the Rodrigo Y Gabriela concert

I did not come into my five months in Munich expecting much or even with plans. The general idea was to take advantage of those this unique stay in Europe and try as many new things as possible. Thus, I finally ended up attending my first proper concerts: Bloc Party, of which I have already written, and Rodrigo Y Gabriela. As an aside, I find it rather funny that my first concerts are attended in Germany but neither are German groups. Bloc Party hails from London, and Rodrigo Y Gabriela came out of Mexico by way of Ireland. Good grief, except for a “Wie geht es euch?” from Matt Tong of Bloc Party, the bands did not even try to speak German. Hooray for globalization and all that jazz, I suppose.

Anyway, Rodrigo Y Gabriela. My second concert. Rodrigo and Gabriela are an acoustic guitar playing duo. They met as members of Terra Acida, a thrash metal band in Mexico, and were discovered while busking in Ireland by Damien Rice. The world owes Mr. Rice a hearty clap on the back for that. They are amazing in every musical sense. Their talent and skill are undeniable, and their music is soulful and infectious. This is not music that just plays in the background. It captures your attention like that bombshell you pass on the street and causes you to nearly stumble over yourself when you turn to get that second look and confirm that God loved the world enough to create her. If you hear Rodrigo Y Gabriela, even in passing, you are not human if you do not find yourself tapping your foot or giving in to the rhythm in the least. Even more, their sound is unique. It is not flamenco, it is not rock, and it is definitely not the same three chords by some talentless fool with a pretty face. It is entirely their own. Rodrigo does the melody, and Gabriela takes care of harmony and rhythm. Yes, percussion, and as great as their sound is, it hits the mind-blowing level when you actually see what they have to do with their hands to create this sound. Kind of like that Yngwie Malmsteen guy, you lose the experience without the visual. You want an idea? Check out these live clips of Tamacun and Diablo Rojo and Stairway to Heaven on YouTube.

I love those clips. I appreciated the skill of Rodrigo and Gabriela still more after seeing them live. It is unfortunate that the clips only give the barest sense of the concert. Of course the atmosphere is charged, completely different from a solo listen in your room, but your impression of their skill only pulls a gold medal jump when they keep the insanity up for a solid two hours and their encore shreds even more than their opening set.

The music and performance alone made the 16 Euro ticket, 45-minute delay and last-minute change of venue more than worth it. The kicker, though, lay in their answer to a complaint I had raised earlier that day. There is too much irony in the world. All we participants in this postmodern Western world have is a feigned appreciation for anything because to actually care about something is to leave ourselves open to derision. I could and likely will write a post on this sometime, dropping the level of direness, but let us let it stand at that. For now. To return to the point, Rodrigo Y Gabriela’s concert was delightfully free of it all. Rodrigo took multiple bathroom breaks between songs and ran the frets with a bottle of Beck’s in one hand for one song. Gabriela’s related the story behind their song “FUIO,” or some such acronym. It was honest and devoid of any pretension. Come on, they were taking song requests within fifteen minutes. Best of all, perhaps, was when Gabriela started head banging and flashing the devil horns. She is the first person I have ever seen do that non-ironically, and it was wonderful.

I have only a single complaint, having forgiven the previously mentioned delay. The dual punches of Bloc Party and Rodrigo Y Gabriela, excellent live performers who are still fresh and exciting, as my first concerts has spoiled me. All future concerts are doomed to fall short of the great googly balls of perfect that these were.

Should you desire a second opinion on this concert, especially from someone who can write intelligently on the technical skill of the duo with the appropriate vocabulary, check out this post by my friend Emmett, who delayed his trip to Munich a week in order to catch the concert. Also, I introduced him to their music. I take his appreciation for their sound as a sign of great taste in music on my part.