Garcia Marquez and the Art of Creativity

I have been reading lately the memoirs of Columbian author and Nobel Prize winner Gabriel Garcia Marquez (and if you have never read any of his work, shame on you). I've always been a gigantic fan of his work, ever since I read the first sentence of '100 Years Of Solitude': "Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice." Never mind the three different periods of time that are called out, how does one discover ice? Garcia Marquez packs more ideas, and imagery, into one sentence than most authors do in entire chapters.

In any case, 'Living To Tell The Tale' is Garcia Marquez's attempt to tell the story of his life while sorting out the truthful memories from the ones that may have been imagined. It is a theme that he touches on frequently in his writings, what is the truth, what is imagined, what is dreamed. Especially memories as he describes many of his characters as imprisoned by memories, endangered by memories.

"During this period my parents were responsible for an emotional mishap that left me with a scar difficult to erase. It happened one day when my mother suffered an attack of nostalgia and sat down to play 'After the Ball Is Over,' the historic waltz of her secret love, and Papa had the romantic idea of dusting off his violin to accompany her, even though it was missing a string. She adjusted without difficulty to his romantic middle-of-the-night style and played better than ever, until she looked at him with pleasure over her shoulder and realized that his eyes were wet with tears. 'Who are you remembering?' my mother asked with ferocious innocence. 'The first time we played this together,' he answered, inspired by the waltz. Then my mother slammed both fists down on the keyboard in a rage.
'It wasn't with me, you Jesuit!' she shouted at the top of her voice. 'You know very well who you played it with and you're crying for her.'"

What else strikes me about this book is the author's desperate hunger to be a writer. From the earliest age all he wanted to do was write. He dropped out of school, alienating his parents and starved for years, for his craft, for his art. I am terribly jealous of this, both of his ability to conjure up the most magical and wonderful landscapes for his characters, the depths of his emotional insights, and his discipline. I too, have always wanted to be an artist, but thru a combination of...all sorts of things....it didn't work out like that. For whatever reason(s) my parents never encouraged me in drawing and painting, which I always wanted to do, but I got lots of encouragement for music and acting. I guess I was always something of a middling talent, because even though I was granted years of music lessons, I don't recall ever being singled out as good at it, or described by anyone as that. With acting it was bit of a different story, as I loved it, took to it at a very early age, and started regularly performing in community, school, and church theatre. However, somewhere, somehow, along the way I also picked up the virus "lack of self-confidence", which must be the most corrosive of diseases, as it can cause both the physical and mental muscles to atrophy from lack of exercise. How I got infected with this disease I am not sure, and I don't want to use this space to cast stones; besides it doesn't really matter anymore as I am not a character in Russian novel, trapped and doomed by the past.

So in my mid-20s I put down the youthful exercises and "came of age". I stopped acting, dropped the music lessons, forgo any thought of art, as I believed at the time that it was my responsibility to focus on getting an education and a job. But in the back of my mind I grieved a bit, I always wanted to create art, of some kind, somehow. And now that I am older I have taken up this desire in earnest, and what I am discovering is rather interesting. I have taken it upon myself to paint a few canvasses, but since I have never been trained in perspective all my shapes come across as flat. However I do love to paint, as I love pushing colors across the canvasses with brushes, its both soothing and fulfilling. So I am now taking beginning drawing classes from a close friend, who is teaching me how to measure and draw perspective, how to shade, how to judge the light, and how to use the tools of the trade - the different pencils and charcoals, the erasers, what paper to use, etc. Its both fascinating and frustrating.

A big reason why I didn't draw from a young age is that I always thought my drawings were ugly. Flat, little tonal differences, little use of shading, is what I remember and what I remember hating. Yes, hating. I never liked my art; now I do. But, what I am also noticing, and what was always there, is a lack of simple patience with myself; if the drawing doesn't go right the first time my initial overriding desire is to rip it up and start over, or to just throw something and walk away from it altogether. So my art teacher points this out again and again, that I don't take well to criticism, that I want it to go right, right at the start, that it takes years to learn these techniques. All correct, absolutely. I have to give up those voices in my head telling me its ugly, it has to be right from the start, I have to let myself sink into the process, that the point is not the finish but the journey.

"Writer's Block" aka Random Junk

I've been spending alot of brain power last few days trying to come up with a topic for my next post, and have been batting a lot of zeros with regards to actual ideas. Its mostly been bits and pieces, random thoughts that haven't coalesced into a meaty honest-to-God blog post. So in the interest of actually posting *something* I am throwing a bunch of ideas out there, in the hopes that it will add up to...something.... Do with it what  you will.


I am a Internet Plumber.
For my job at the ISP, who's name will remain unknown, I am titled "Network Engineer". As such I monitor the relative health and working state of the different networks that my ISP is in charge of. If any break I try to fix and if am unable to fix I escalate to a more knowledgeable individual or team. Now as the conglomerate networks, grouped together to form the "internet" as we know it, is at its most basic, a group of circuits of various sizes (1.44mb, 100mb, 1GB, 10GB, etc), capable of moving traffic from point A to point B, it seems to me that this setup can be seen as a group of pipes, in the same way that plumbing moves water from different points, thru pipes of different sizes. So when people ask me what I do for a living, and I try to explain my job, and when their eyes begin to glaze over....I say "I am basically a Internet plumber, keeping the pipes open". They get that.

I hate driving in traffic.
Seriously. Hate it. Mostly because I think other drivers are a gang of criminally insane idiots. Gentle readers, you of course are all excluded from the above grouping. I just get really tired of the casual way drivers treat each other, bicyclists, and pedestrians, rudely tail-gating, cutting each other off, changing lanes without signaling, etc etc. Its scary because we dont know what the other person is thinking, and when you see people chatting on their phones when they should be driving, well you think the worst. And when thru a combination of bad driving, erratic driving, drunken driving, or just plain bad luck, we end up in accidents that can change our lives in a instant, it feels as if we are letting strangers have too much of a "impact" upon our lives. Then having to spend time sitting in traffic, with little or no forward movement, feels as if my soul was dying, little by little.

So at some level I have to trust complete strangers that they will be paying attention to what they are doing, that they will obey the rules of the road, that they will responsibly drive these multi-ton behemoths....and I don't like it. I don't like having to cede that much trust to people I don't know. And when I see how casually rude drivers are to each other as a matter of course I like it even less. If I had my druthers I wouldn't be driving all that much at all, but since we have a terrible lack of good transportation alternatives here in Seattle, I don't have much choice except to drive most places. Its sad because I actually love to drive; the act of driving is a lot of fun and when you are wheeling down an open road, blasting the music and watching the landscape roll past, it can be a time of sublime clarity and lasting memory. But city driving, dodging potholes, traffic jams, other drivers, it all adds up to a painful experience. I wish I had another choice.

I love peanut butter.
Seriously. I love adore peanut butter. Its creamy goodness, the peanutty smell, the thick taste. And it has to be crunchy peanut butter, none of that wimpy non-crunchy butter for me thank you very much. Is there a better snack food? I think not. Peanut Butter should be carved into Mt Rushmore. When I die just immerse my body into a 6ft jar of peanut butter and bury me.

I spend way too much time re-living past embarrassments.
Does anyone else do this too? I hate it. My brain will be humming happily along, thinking about this and that, and then alluva sudden.....I am back at that time when I, without meaning to, picked a verbal fight with my friend's dad, at my friend's wedding. This happens to me all the time, that my brain (stoopid stoopid brain) will suddenly (surely laughing the whole time) lurch over into Embarrassing Memory Lane and I'll be reliving that time when I said that...."thing"...when I shoulda kept my yap shut. I know I know! Its a waste of time and energy, I cant change the past so why fret? Especially when there is so much peanut butter to eat!

I like Rock 'n Roll.
Still. Its been a almost 50 year obsession, ever since I heard "I want to hold your hand" on the radio, as a 4 year old. I still love the passion, the angst, the tension and release. Right now I am cranking Queens of the Stone Age, loving the dinosaur stomping riffs, sounding all the world like some primeval beast climbing out of the tar pits. I also love the more "sensitive" artists such as Beachouse, Elliott Smith, Sufjan Stevens, Devotchka, Ereykah Badu, and the hysterical weirdness of Tom Waits (he is really funny live). I love the blues, my appreciation for Jazz grows daily, and I oftentimes fall asleep listening to classical music. But I still come back to the rock. Recently I stumbled across this vid, a live clip of the Faces doing "Stay With Me", and it seems to capture alot of what I love about rock music: the want of artists to be recognized, and at its most basic level the boy wants the girl to notice him. And here is a band, the Faces, who in their salad days of 1972-1974 were one of the best (some peeps say the best, but....Rolling Stones) live bands ever. And surely what comes across in this vid is 5 guys who are really enjoying playing with each other, kicking out a loose, sloppy, and oh-so-tight song that would do any backwoods roadhouse proud. As Rod Stewart says at the beginning of the song, "Slow down...Play it dirty". Indeed.

Paris Part 3

First of all I want to apologize to everyone for the horrible font problem of my last Paris post. I copied it over from Facebook and for some reason Blogger decided that it had to be underlined with a white background; hideous to look at. I offer my apologies to everyone, and I appreciate you reading thru it....If you could stand it....

I think this shall be my last post on Paris, about Paris, regarding Paris. Obviously the trip, even as short as it was, left a lasting impression on me. Like I have said previously, travel changes us, or at least it should. Sometimes we dont know how much until later. As for me, the impact has been immediate, but without any real changes, other than a terribly strong desire to go back to Paris and to continue to travel throughout the world. What struck me immediately in Paris was to the degree as to how much slower the pace of life is there. Its not to say that Parisians are somnolent sleepwalkers, but more that its more relaxed than the US. Lets remember that their work week is 35 hours in length, giving them more leisure time, which lends itself to the slower pace. Honestly I dont know how this translates economically, and I wonder if France and the US were roughly the same size, with access to roughly the same raw materials would our economic output be similar? What I do know is that as a whole Parisians struck me as more relaxed than Americans. It is true that of all the industrial nations the US public works harder, keeps longer work hours, and has less vacation times; is this a good or bad thing I will leave that for you to decide. As for me, I will say that I prefer the slower paced life, but that is just me only and I am not going to advocate it for everyone else.

What also came to me is that walking, living, being in Paris is to be around living history, significant history, that stretches back almost 2000 years. Everywhere you look (at least in the city center) there is a historically significant building, landmark, or statue. Its unavoidable. As a history major I was riding in hog heaven; being able to see with my own eyes the places that I had only been able to read about, previously, was a constant delight. Then there is the booksellers along the Seine. Paris has granted, for a few hundred years now, licenses to booksellers, who set up stalls along the banks of the Seine; these booksellers sell anything from medical drawing prints, to Audobon sketches, out of print magazines, first edition books (mostly in French), and I did not get nearly as much time to browse them as I would have wanted to, because as Balzac once said "Where is the will so weak but in a bookstore?"

Speaking of bookstores, this place, Shakespeare & Company, almost made the trip worth it by itself. Its a tiny, crowded, dark bookstore stuffed with overhanging shelves, frumpy chairs, and a lending library upstairs.  Upstairs also, tucked into the corner of the art books room was a upright piano, where patrons are welcome to sit and tickle out a tune. Its a legendary place, and I can really see why, as it reflects a love of books, of good writing, and an appreciation for the touch and tactile feel of books, which you cannot get from the electronic formats. I would rather spend 5 minutes shopping in a bookstore such as this, than 1 hour shopping for books online.

So, once again, Paris is the sum of its parts: the architecture, the museums, the whimsical bookstores and bookstalls, the romantic Seine, the cathedrals everywhere, the landmarks, the food. As this wonderful history of Paris points out, Paris is a Lady, it is a feminine city, beguiling in its charms. I am a believer in this. I believe enough that I will be going back, next year, for a longer stay.

-photos by Melissa Massie

Nothing is sacred. Everything changes.

I was reminded of all that, and more, when I saw this article reporting on Hasbro replacing Monopoly tokens. I grew up in a family of rabid Monopoly players, we would stage the days long Monopoly battles, and they were a cutthroat business. No deal too sordid to make, no promise that could not be broken. So I have a deep and abiding nostalgia, and love, for the game. Its a part of the American culture by this time, same as Clue, or Scrabble. A touchstone for many of us, growing up.

So, in what must be a calculated bid to raise awareness, and subsequent sales, Hasbro has decided that they will be replacing one of our beloved tokens, and is allowing the public to vote on which piece gets replaced. I dont feel comfortable voting for this, as the game tokens are as much a part of the game as Boardwalk; Hasbro might as well remove all the Railroads while they are at it. Now, I can see how in a age when Hasbro has been releasing, for years, Monopoly games that are very city specific, that this is not much of a change; in other words there is a Seattle version of Monopoly, featuring Seattle attractions and landmarks and many cities have their own Monopoly versions also. But to me this feels like they are removing one of the parts of the game that makes it unique, as each token is different, and takes on its own personality, and I might be stretching a bit on that last point. What I really want to say is that I think somethings, in this life, should be left alone.

But I also know that is impossible. We live and die in a world that is in constant flux, whether by natural or man made agent. Metals rust, buildings age and must be torn down, trees blow over, people grow old and die. And when we have an object that is hundreds of years old, say a landmark, we agree that it should be preserved, to remind us of its part in our history. Even so, these preservations age, despite our best efforts. This is as it should be, we must always remember the impermanence of it all, and our very existence.

Funny how just a little thing about replacing some game tokens can cause me to wax eloquent on the existentialism of life. Its just a game after all.

Paris Part 2

I wrote this last month while in Paris. It seems to capture what I was seeing and feeling pretty well, the time I was there.

Day 8 Paris: And now I am full. Satiated with drink and food. Paris is for foodies, but not for gluttons, and there is a difference. One enjoys food here, the serving of it, the banter with waiters and the couples at the other tables around you, the deciphering of the menus, the choosing of wines, the different courses, and the long lingering pleasurable relaxed time it all takes. It is 12:15 am, and we have just rolled in from dinner at a French restaurant. The entree was scallops in butter on the half-shell, on a plate of rock salt, dinner was cassoulet of pork, bacon, ham and legumes, dessert was the richest and thickest chocolate sorbet known to humankind and the wine....well....I was going to crawl into the bottle, but....

The day began, as they all do, with a walk to the metro, and we took the train to the Invalides station, where we met Jennifer, one of our local hosts. Walked across the Pont Alexandre III to a brasserie for a light repast of orange juice, and cafe (always cafe for me). On the way there was a tunnel for the road that parallels the Seine, heading east, and on the top of the tunnel at its entrance was a replica of the Statue of Liberty's flame. "Oh, interesting", I thought; but it turns out that this was the tunnel where the Princess Diana lost her life and there were notes and flowers left at the base of the flame. After our repast we walked over to the Quai Branly museum for this exhibit, which was endlessly fascinating :http://www.quaibranly.fr/en/programmation/exhibitions/currently/the-sources-of-aborigine-painting.html

So far, and I may re-think this statement, but so far this may have been the best art I have seen here, and we still have the Hopper exhibit tomorrow. Yes, I know, better than the Mona Lisa, better than any Ingres, better than the Van Goghs? Well, yes and no. No because Van Gogh stomps anyone and everyone else, and the Mona Lisa is the epitome of sublime, and I so wanted to run out of the Louvre with one of its Ingres (they have so many, surely they wouldnt miss one!). But, "The Sources of Aboriginal Painting" flipped my lid like no art has done for quite some time. I dont want to call it primitive, because its only "primitive" from a Western viewpoint; I think it better to call it simple, in that its using a very limited palette and very limited motifs: a few circles, wavy lines, dots, a rectangular object here and there....and thats about it. And yet, the emotion that is conveyed, the spiritual meanings that pour off the canvasses, is quite powerful and beautiful. 

And, speaking of powerful and beautiful, a short walk from Quai Branly put us on the short shopping street of the Rue Cler, small lunch of stuffed raviolis in cream sauce and cafe (quel naturel) and then a 3 block stroll to the promenade of the Eiffel Tower. Yes, the Tower is visible from just about anywhere in Paris and yes, it is instantly recognizable as one of the world's more famous landmarks and yes yes, you dont realize how beautiful, stunning, and simply amazing it all is until Bam! its right there in front of you. Graceful in design, yet exhuding a sense of power, it doesnt so much squat as it almost dances; because it is not a solid object, you can see thru it, because of this it is not some squat solid tower, it has soft curved lines that start far apart and come to a point, thus it doesnt sit and look ugly (and feel ugly in the way too many towers do), but invites you in to enjoy its space. Anyways, we strolled thru, underneath, crossed the Seine and walked up the hill to the Trocadero for the best view of the Tower. We then caught the metro, back to Jennifer and Ofer's apartment, and then went out to our dinner, described above. Et Viola!

-photo by Melissa Massie

The Largest Structure in the Universe

It has always been a source of amazement to me, astronomy and the study of objects in and beyond our Solar System. I dont pretend to understand much of it, I wish I could but I was always a 'C' student in astronomy; not good enough at the math is what my T.A. told me. Fair enough, I still love looking over Hubble photographs and try to keep up on the Mars missions. I also feel humbled by the size and scope of various objects in our galaxy and beyond; I am speaking of the various nebulas, dwarf stars, distant spiral galaxies, the shadows of planets orbiting distant stars. It is a great time to be alive as we are constantly pushing the boundaries of what we know about our Universe, its origins, its makeup.

What brought all this up was the release, Saturday, of the news that the largest structure in the known universe has been discovered, and well....enormous doesnt even begin to describe it.

From the article:

"The newfound LQC is composed of 73 quasars and spans about 1.6 billion light-years in most directions, though it is 4 billion light-years across at its widest point. To put that mind-boggling size into perspective, the disk of the Milky Way galaxy — home of Earth's solar system — is about 100,000 light-years wide. And the Milky Way is separated from its nearest galactic neighbor, Andromeda, by about 2.5 million light-years."

To use a somewhat hackneyed phrase, this just blows my mind. So our own galaxy, filled as it is, with nebulas that  span light years, solar systems, stars....would only take up about 1% of this structure, if that. Contemplating these massive objects, these gigantic distances, helps me keep my life in perspective. Not that it makes me feel insignificant, but more that it reminds me that we are made up of the dust of stars, of stars that exploded billions of years ago and the forces of gravity caused the dust and particles of these distant explosions to coalesce into our sun and the planetary bodies that orbit it. Somehow it doesnt really matter how large this newly discovered structure is, how long the time it takes for light to travel from point A to B across a galaxy, or galaxies, none of this will have much impact upon my daily life; but it sure reminds me that there is so much out there we still do not understand, and it is the natural curiosity of humans that got us to this point. It is our innate desire to understand the world, and cosmos, and our place in it, that pushes us to explore our world and other worlds, and the surrounding universe. This is the way it should be, because when we don't explore, when we don't push our knowledge boundaries, we stagnate. We are unique, each of us, on this planet, and in the Universe and we should never forget that. 

One more point: I love that thru the advances of science we are able to peer into the farthest reaches of the Universe, which means at the same time we are looking back in time, and we are almost able to see our point of origin, we are almost able to see the Big Bang itself. 

-daniel

Paris, Part 1

So I went to Paris last month. For the first time. And, yes, it was amazing. The food, the buildings, the people, the landmarks, the museums filled with art, the food. Yes, it was all pretty overwhelming, and endlessly interesting. I've been reading about Paris, and France, my whole life; I dont consider myself a Francophile, but Paris is one place I've always wanted to visit.

Travel does interesting things to us. Supposedly travel is to be part of either working or a vacation, sometimes both. To travel overseas is to see your culture from afar, and the view can be interesting. Every time I go abroad I always make an effort to speak to local residents as I am fascinated by their lives, their politics and their views on the US. Personally I find that travelling makes me listen and observe more, especially when I go to places where I dont speak the language, if for nothing else trying to get from point A to point B as easily as possible. Usually its not a problem as English is a universal language, and if you combine a few polite phrases in the native tongue with simple politeness you will find much success and friendly people.

But what I really want to say is that Paris is a glorious place. As full of light and culture as has been written about. Even though I was there in December approaching the winter solstice, and the sunlight had a weak and watery quality about it, it was still very obvious as to how beautiful the city is. Parisians are a prideful bunch, but they have very good reason to be, as they are the guardians of some of the world's most important treasures, a responsibility they take seriously (and they never let you forget it either).

So the piece above, which you might recognize, is fairly emblematic of Paris. You see the image everywhere, on posters, billboards, tourist tchotkes. Its also quite the thing to see it in person. As you might imagine it is quite the superstar in its home in the Louvre, there are signs everywhere pointing to its gallery, and when you enter the gallery, there are tourists 10 deep in front of the painting. However Baby and I timed this all just right; we went to the Louvre on Wednesday, when it is open late until 9pm and we entered about 4pm. So the first time I went to the Mona Lisa's gallery the tourists were 10 deep in front of the painting; I went and looked at other galleries and pieces, came back in about an hour, the number of tourists were halved; went away for another hour, came back and had her to myself, along with about 2 other tourists. Well, nothing quite prepares you for these moments until you actually live them, as happened for me and Ms Lisa. She says so much, with that enigmatic smile, and still keeps her secrets. The shading, the lighting, the detail. And the size of the painting, its not much larger than 2.5ft X 3.5ft. I wonder, though, all the people who come to see this piece, and it must be thousands, daily, do they come to see it because its famous, or because its beautiful? Or both?

-photo by Melissa Massie

The Marx Brothers and Bugs Bunny were my heroes growing up. I loved their crazy, over the top anarchic approach to life: If its not working, blow it up; if possible pull it off with a clever quip. Chico was a fantastic, gifted pianist, he was so much fun to watch; Harpo the brilliant physical comedian; Groucho the master of the non-sequitar. And Bugs. What can we say about Bugs that hasnt already been said? Not much, except to note that Bugs wouldn't have lived if it weren't for Groucho, his obvious influence. Not that that last point matters much, it truly doesnt.

As a kid I was an addict for the Warner Bro's cartoons. The then black&white, later color, cartoons populated by rubber bodied characters engaged in the most ridiculous of antics completely appealed to my pre-adolescent self. Its a strange dichotomy being put out in these cartoons, rather simple morality tales involving horrendous acts of violence - guns, cannons and explosives constantly going off in someone's face/beak/hand - that are casually dismissed with a joke, a knowing shrug or arched eyebrow (Bugs is the master of this). When I grew up a bit the Marx Bro's became one of my teenage obsessions; I wanted to be Groucho so bad. I remember reading a Marx Bro's biography that told the tale of how they would pretty much demolish the backdrops and sets of their plays on Broadway, every night. That kind of life completely appealed to me; that and the way they would send up and satire the everyday hypocrisy we endure in our lives.

I bring this up for no other reason than to talk about both Bugs and Marx Bro's in the same post. It does feel like it dates me, that I grew up being able to remember a time when both black & white Marx Bro's movies and color Bugs Bunny cartoons could be found on tv fairly easily. Now, speaking of being dated, the radio is playing "96 Tears" by ? and the Mysterians. What a great, almost perfect, pop song.

-daniel