One should attempt to devote one’s life to what one enjoys most and should not fight one’s nature---as long as doing so enables one to earn enough to maintain a decent lifestyle.
Being an artist is a decease, an obsession. The artist can be poor; he does not create for money. (A failure liberates unless it impoverishes.) Or the artist can be rich, owing to his obsessive work ethics.
Art deserves a life of its own.
Life’s narrative is nonlinear. Any linearity is imaginary; it emerges as one observes the world and cherry-picks facts and frames to make up stories. Reading history is a much saner enterprise than following the news because history has been pre-digested by historians, whereas the news is a madman’s nightmare.
(Similarly, one's train of thought is typically nonlinear and rarely adds up to a logically consistent system, unless one sets out to produce a mathematical model. Hence, it is nonsensical to ask, say: "What did John Rawls really mean?" He did not.)
Improvisation is ultimate art: mould the circumstances, do not get attached to what was supposed to be. The best directors and choreographers improvise off of their actors’ and dancers’ idiosyncratic skills. (Ballet trustees canonise the letter and neglect the spirit of the work, thereby euthanising it.)
Life is complete without answers.
Lynch is an inherently kind man and does not resist the impulse of kindness. But each has his own driver of creativity. Not all drivers are so benevolent, towards the creator as well as his collaborators.
1 July 2018
"The Americans" (2015–2018, seasons 3–6)
Philip loved America even as he was failing there---perhaps, even more so because of that. Henry was different; though him, Philip had accomplished his American dream. He had given his son the gift of an American life, which differed from a Soviet life in that it offered an individual more than one chance to succeed.
What is the point of Jennings' escape? A duty to the kids. Professionalism, for it is all that they had left to live for. A commonsensical acceptance of a gift of (at least) one more life.
One can live for a certain ethos and values that one associates with a country, but living for these is ultimately living for oneself, not the country. A diplomat either identifies with his mission or resigns. Friendship transcends national boundaries and trumps national loyalty, rulers' tool to manipulate the masses. Friendship also teaches one to empathise broadly; nationalism does not. While everyone being true to his own values may hamper co-operation, it safeguards against the nation's patriotic sentiment being hijacked. In The Americans, the Centre did not even want their own spies married to each other to be friends.
All kill. Some sit on bureaucratic committees. Some grade negligently, teach halfheartedly, govern foolishly, serve lazily, work to rule, cure inexpertly, or just sit and do nothing. Indeed, those who kill for living (e.g., the active military) may be more acutely aware of the deleterious effects of their actions than those who simply sit back and promote inefficiency.
The American Dream is not about America. It is about being free: being the first one to go to the Iguazú jungle and settle in a hut or to build a startup in a friend's garage. Philip might as well have another chance at this dream.
What is the point of Jennings' escape? A duty to the kids. Professionalism, for it is all that they had left to live for. A commonsensical acceptance of a gift of (at least) one more life.
One can live for a certain ethos and values that one associates with a country, but living for these is ultimately living for oneself, not the country. A diplomat either identifies with his mission or resigns. Friendship transcends national boundaries and trumps national loyalty, rulers' tool to manipulate the masses. Friendship also teaches one to empathise broadly; nationalism does not. While everyone being true to his own values may hamper co-operation, it safeguards against the nation's patriotic sentiment being hijacked. In The Americans, the Centre did not even want their own spies married to each other to be friends.
All kill. Some sit on bureaucratic committees. Some grade negligently, teach halfheartedly, govern foolishly, serve lazily, work to rule, cure inexpertly, or just sit and do nothing. Indeed, those who kill for living (e.g., the active military) may be more acutely aware of the deleterious effects of their actions than those who simply sit back and promote inefficiency.
The American Dream is not about America. It is about being free: being the first one to go to the Iguazú jungle and settle in a hut or to build a startup in a friend's garage. Philip might as well have another chance at this dream.
23 April 2018
1 April 2018
Absinthe
(Caesars Palace, 25 March 2018)
The beauty one admires is born out of violence, competition, and (at least in the popular sense of the term) injustice. It is not only the outcome of competition that some admire but also the act of competing itself. The jungle births beauty while feeling no compulsion to maximise happiness, except for that of the well-heeled tourist to the jungle. Even the macroscopic natural beauty is an outcome of the competition of what would have been regarded as sentient organisms had history been viewed through time-lapse glasses.
Behind each beautiful performer there are tens of thousands of hours of pain and sacrifice. There are also scores of those who had no shortage of dedication but discovered that they lacked raw talent.
The risks that the performers take make the performance intimate. The risk is not only to oneself but also the audience, seated close enough to the stage to cushion the fall of a chair or a performer or to send a gliding roller skater's leg off course. One simultaneously empathises with the performers' sense of responsibility and admires their confidence.
With everyone seated close to the stage, the show has the intimacy of a jazz performance. Some members of the audience would occasionally be selected for a test in zero political correctness and carpe diemism; everyone would pass. All jokes are in poor taste, which only serves to emphasise that hard work is the only taste there is.
The beauty one admires is born out of violence, competition, and (at least in the popular sense of the term) injustice. It is not only the outcome of competition that some admire but also the act of competing itself. The jungle births beauty while feeling no compulsion to maximise happiness, except for that of the well-heeled tourist to the jungle. Even the macroscopic natural beauty is an outcome of the competition of what would have been regarded as sentient organisms had history been viewed through time-lapse glasses.
Behind each beautiful performer there are tens of thousands of hours of pain and sacrifice. There are also scores of those who had no shortage of dedication but discovered that they lacked raw talent.
The risks that the performers take make the performance intimate. The risk is not only to oneself but also the audience, seated close enough to the stage to cushion the fall of a chair or a performer or to send a gliding roller skater's leg off course. One simultaneously empathises with the performers' sense of responsibility and admires their confidence.
With everyone seated close to the stage, the show has the intimacy of a jazz performance. Some members of the audience would occasionally be selected for a test in zero political correctness and carpe diemism; everyone would pass. All jokes are in poor taste, which only serves to emphasise that hard work is the only taste there is.
11 February 2018
ZONAMACO
(Hipódromo de las Américas, 10 February 2018)
The exhibition is a city. No individual exhibitor excels. Yet, taken together, the galleries, their visitors, and keepers comprise a metropolis that is greater than the sum of its parts. The galleries are not captive to any single curator’s madness. Instead, it is Starbucks coffee and the customer plastic that run through the galleries’ veins and force them to remain relevant.
Art is a job done well.
The exhibition is a city. No individual exhibitor excels. Yet, taken together, the galleries, their visitors, and keepers comprise a metropolis that is greater than the sum of its parts. The galleries are not captive to any single curator’s madness. Instead, it is Starbucks coffee and the customer plastic that run through the galleries’ veins and force them to remain relevant.
Art is a job done well.
11 January 2018
The Philadelphia Academy of Arts
(5 January 2018)
Loneliness wakens existence. To survive, one must learn to manufacture one’s own oxygen, in order to justify existence, each time from the first principles.
The Philadelphia downtown is nobly dead. It is a city in exile. The people in the streets do not seem to want to be there, at least not in that frigid weather, a reminder that nature wants you dead, or at least is indifferent about your existence.
A city in exile gives you the gift of time. One may find its indifference excruciating. Or one may reflect and create. Time does not ask to conform or compete. It encourages discovery and experimentation.
Loneliness wakens existence. To survive, one must learn to manufacture one’s own oxygen, in order to justify existence, each time from the first principles.
The Philadelphia downtown is nobly dead. It is a city in exile. The people in the streets do not seem to want to be there, at least not in that frigid weather, a reminder that nature wants you dead, or at least is indifferent about your existence.
A city in exile gives you the gift of time. One may find its indifference excruciating. Or one may reflect and create. Time does not ask to conform or compete. It encourages discovery and experimentation.
22 November 2017
"Twin Peaks: The Return" (2017)
“Twin Peaks: The Return” (TP) resembles poetry. If music is good, ninety percent of listeners like it. If poetry is good, ten percent of readers like it.
TP is a painting that one befriends and revisits. The characters are alive because the action is not cut into cartoonish snippets, which would make anyone appear either an action-hero and a wit or an insufferable bore.
The characters look more real because aged. They do not look like obvious choices for a TV show. They are known to have lived and, so, are alive.
The reason some object to the atomic bomb is because they cannot deny the number of deaths a nuclear conflict would inflict. By contrast, when non-nuclear warfare is entertained, it is easier to engage in wishful thinking and believe that the conflict will somehow resolve quickly and with few victims (at least for the favoured side). One may also believe that the more skilled will live, and the lesser skilled will die—that is, that the outcome will be fair. The bomb, by contrast, kills indiscriminately.
One may enjoy mountains without understanding how they have been formed. One may be lulled by the sound of the ocean even if one does not understand wave formation. One can enjoy without understanding. (It very well may be that our perception is just coarse enough not to generate more intricate observations than we can explain, at least collectively, as humanity. But then again, it may not be.)
There is no operationally useful definition of god, but an epistemically useful one can be gleaned from a metaphor: red blood cells as individuals, the organism they serve as god. The organism looks nothing like a red blood cell and is beyond each cell’s comprehension. The best each cell can do is to serve the organism by fulfilling the function that the cell has the urge to fulfil. TP displays an organism. It may be just beyond the capacity of the viewer to comprehend this organism and its intentions.
TP is suffused with love for life, for people, for differences. TP takes as axiomatic the acceptance of differences, as well as the tolerance towards the diversity of individual passions. Everyone has been manufactured for a purpose.
TP’s goal is to scare one out of “reality,” to make one think, for oneself. The movie is a canvas on which the viewer can project his own anxieties, visions, hopes, and aesthetics.
TP is a reunion of friends and family. These friends and family are not TP’s characters but one’s former selves.
As one moves from place to place, and as one chooses to be a slightly different self, one inhabits different realities. Later, one can travel and revisit a past reality. But one may not recognise it. Or the reality may refuse to recognise one. All one can do is to inhabit well the roles that one has been granted or has chosen and focus on the best strategy from now on.
Not to feel diminished by others’ accomplishments, everyone ultimately creates his own reality, populates it by his own values, and inhabits it. David Lynch creates a world that the viewer is free to co-opt. In Lynch’s world, you do not have to be rich. You do not have to be smart. You do not have to be particularly beautiful or young. You do not have to be sane. But you have to be, to connect, and to dream up a possibility result, a hero, or an idea that would unite and encourage some to become heroes.
Lynch grew up in provinces. He knows how to listen to silence and how to notice. He knows what electricity sounds like, what the night sounds like, and what the evening fog sounds like. Living in the middle of nowhere makes one sense-deprived (as does meditation) and compels one to create in order not to be stifled by silence.
TP explodes in episode 18 (E18), which comprises half of the series. The states are high: E18 manufactures reality: our reality. It is there for a purpose, which, by the end of the episode, will have been accomplished.
Interpreting TP (should one feel compelled to do so) is a metaphor for artistic and scientific endeavours. The ambiguity, the incompleteness, and the improbability of the narrative is what makes interpreting it so compelling and addictive.
Yet TP is not magical realism. Magical realism flouts rules. TP creates a new world, with a vocabulary and a consistent set of rules.
For Lynch, film is as a primarily visual and audio medium. Music is the portal between realities.
To fight evil, one must accept all parts of oneself, good and less good.
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