You know that light, deep poem by moody, broody Phillip Larkin where he compares his youngers' libertine sexuality with his own English generation's religious liberation?
When I see a couple of kids
And think he's fucking her and she's
Taking pills or wearing a diaphragm
I know this is paradise
Everyone old has dreamed of all their lives—
Bonds and gestures pushed to one side
Like an outdated combine harvester,
And everyone young going down the long slide
To happiness, endlessly. I wonder if
Anyone looked at me, forty years back,
And thought, That'll be the life;
No God any more, or sweating in the dark
About hell and that, or having to hide
What you think of the priest. He
And his lot will all go down the long slide
Like free bloody birds. And immediately
Rather than words comes the thought of high windows:
The sun-comprehending glass,
And beyond it, the deep blue air, that shows
Nothing, and is nowhere, and is endless.
I've started to wonder if the loss of religion is not just a liberation, but is also meant to be a loss of faith (in the sense of optimism), or of comfort, and if the loss of sexual mores is a similarly tragic fall?
]]> </p>For those who might have missed it, this was a remarkably astute article about what draws capitalists to capitalism. Rather than blithely pro-market, like The NYer's Financial Page, or stubbornly anti-, this article started with a sober account of what makes capitalism effective, and then went on to detail the history of executive stock options and why they should help the interests of the ordinary punter, and why instead the great industrial captains are making out like bandits at the expense of everyone else.
"In a well-regulated system, greed keeps the economy expanding," says John Cassidy. At first reading, my ear heard this: "In a well-regulated system, greed keeps feeding wealth to the rich," but that's not what he meant. For an economy to expand is for people to be doing more stuff. If we look at the economy not as the circulation of money, but rather as the determination for what people do, the study of that economy becomes very important, even for the not-rich. During the recent boom years, hundreds of thousands of people suddenly got to do something for a living that they enjoyed, more than what they were doing before. Why should this be so? Because having a good economy essentially means capital is ready to hand. The rich are loose with their money: they let you borrow it easily, to do your projects. If you're like me, what's important is not the money, but the project. Start a quirky restaurant or a theatre company; dabble with new technologies; try something that's never been done before. In a boom time, the rich (who possess free capital) catch on to what the humans (who have creative ideas) are doing and they want to be a part of it. When a recession comes, rich people clam up, and the only things you can get paid for are the trustworthy essentials: food, clothes, lodging; sometimes not even those. After the stock crash of 1929, rank and file citizens didn't trust the institutions that held their wealth, and ran to take their cash out of the bank. Poppy the Plant Manager preferred to keep it under his mattress, where it did nothing, than to let Ellis Entrepreneur borrow it and make her dreams come true. This meant that no one's dreams were coming true and everyone had a little cash under their mattress.
Even though everyone had cash, nobody was happy, because the cash wasn't circulating. Cash circulates when people are getting what they want: a cup of coffee, a storefront renovation, an hour of drumming by Art Blakey, the right to print copies of a novel. A thousand pounds of radishes.
Ideally, every activity would be its own reward; but in life, some things just aren't fun, and nobody wants to do them. Pulling radishes out of the ground, for example. Who wants to do that? I don't. If greed keeps the economy expanding, it's as an incentive for ambitious dilettantes to fill these needs. Our dilettante can garner some capital (s/he doesn't need to possess any—so long as investors are loose) and put it to use making people's lives better, perhaps in small ways. The opportunity for that ambitious dilettante to jump into the emerging toilet paper dispenser industry and perhaps to retire comfortably, with all the (hollow?) fruits the modern material world can offer is such an incentive. This means that, as consumers, we have those trinkets available, and that as workers, we have something to do, even if we're not interested in quirky restaurants, theatre companies, or web consulting.
Perhaps it's a bit inequitable that such dilettanterie should be so well rewarded in our society, when anyone can see how much harder the workers toil. But consider also that capitalism has niches for different lifestyles. Whereas a heavily socialist society might have a couple of roles (worker and party administrator) and everyone would be expected to output and receive the same, a capitalist system allows us to choose our own adventure. For the ambitious dilettante, there is the roulette spin at a chance to be materially rich. For the conservative bourgeois, you can trade the chance at riches for stability and comfort; persistence and a bit of hard work will be rewarded with a comfortable home, a comfortable car, a good insurance policy, and a large-screen TV with surround-sound. For the outright lazy, there is a place as well. No one is required to work at an "average" or even a "minimum" pace: if you are willing to consume less, you can set your pace. There are smaller homes, there are Greyhound buses. There are also soup kitchens and homeless shelters, there are countless people who give change to panhandlers. Capitalism, American style, offers a home for the lazy.
Of course, if you have a rich parent, you can be lazy and still bathe in material wealth. This is something of an injustice—and is actually contrary to the ideals of capitalism, but it's endemic to the principles of family, property, and heritage (which are much, much older than capitalism).
But all of this is background for an article about stock options, which have an interesting history. As Cassidy tells it, managers of the big companies of the 50s through the 70s were rewarded for the wrong things: they poured lots of money into plush executive offices, corporate jets, company parties, etc., because they could. By bringing in more profits, they could make their jobs more comfortable. But as economists began pointing out during the 70s, they were using other people's money to do so. A CEO is (supposed to be) nothing more than a lackey—one who executes—for the interests of another group, the stockholders, who might include some spoiled day-traders, but also include lots of joes. A machinist at Boeing, for example, has entrusted that scintilla of excess income that the capitalist captains have offered him (in homage to his back-breaking labor) to a 401(k) plan that manages his money in a pool with Rockefeller's grandkids. The toilet-paper-dispenser company turns hard work into material reward, but depends on this free capital, which comes, in part, from the Boeing machinists, and those Boeing machinists deserve to share in the budding fruits of this ever-expanding economy. It is a testament to our system that a worker can buy a share of stock as easily as a rich investor can. When formal stock in a venture was first sold to investors, in the 1600s, it was done through a true old-boys' network; an explorer wanting to mount an expedition would ask a couple of well-known money-hogs if they wanted to give him something, and share in any profits he might bring back. Today, our market has institutionalized open access to ownership of these enterprises, and buying a share in a venture is not much harder than buying a piece of furniture or finding a book in a library.
At some point, the stockholder became the most important person in any public company. To create profits and spend them was no longer acceptable. Executives should return profits to the shareholders, some of whom live in Peoria, IL, and some of whom are hoping to buy their children a bicycle for Christmas. How then to motivate CEOs to maximize shareholders' value, rather than expense perks for themselves? The answer of the 80s and 90s was to issue stock options.
But although options do give CEOs an incentive to optimize the market value of the stock, they also have a more nefarious effect. Because our stock is, alas, traded on an open market, which is open continuously seven hours a day, and which responds radically in a matter of minutes to public statements, and because the value of a share of stock is not solely the current profits of the organization but also all speculation on future value—and in fact because its value is mostly speculation (by a factor of 20- and sometimes 30-to-1 in today's market), and further because CEOs' option packages are so bloody enormous (Larry Ellison cashed in some 700 million dollars worth of options in 2000, according to the article), these fine gentlemen have an enormous incentive, not just to create value, but also to exaggerate it, and to create bookkeeping strategies that keep everyone in the dark about how valuable the company is.
Read the article. You'll enjoy it.
]]> </p>Unlike distance which is measured between here and there, let's measure closeness from the opposite end of the universe to the desired object. If I am six inches from your thick eyelids, which trap thoughts as quick as a candle's flame, I am only a hundred million light-years away from the opposite edge of space (less six inches).
To be twice as close all I need is move a hundred million light-years closer.
Less six inches.
]]> </p>This grandstanding is in the name of "dialogue," of letting the audience speak and refusing to let any one voice hold the podium for too long—all good things. But an hour later after each person has spoken, how often do we notice if no dialogue has actually occurred, no response has been given to anyone's remarks? Liberal politics, resistance politics, rebellious politics, that politics associated with the people (with individual persons, it is assumed, or else with the people as a collective): these tend almost always into a cacophony of distinct voices, without the requisite synthesis that is supposed to be produced. It tends all too often not to ask itself (we tend not to ask ourselves—each other—) a difficult question that would teach us something about our subject, that would help us make crucial distinctions, that would allow our action tomorrow to be different from our action today. It repeats, it repeats, it repeats. What it doesn't do is affirm, dismiss, compare, or demand.
The speaker speaks on the concept of surrealism as a radical political device. A fellow in the audience pipes up with his example of a "surreal event": "One day I was walking through this maze, lost, trying to get out, and I looked up and I saw some graffiti that said, "Rescue Me."
]]> </p>It was a dear friend who said, about our mutual friends, "It's because they made each other, you see? They love each other because they made each other." We were a grand set of gents and gals who came of age together, mutually defining each others' cool. It's true: I was one of them, or I grew in their shadow, and my own petrous sense of self couldn't help but be quaked open by their ways: their cosmopolitan engagement, their sarcastic detachment, their giddy sense of humor, their joie de vivre.
This sense of cool, which we learned from one another as we weaved it, is a dignified one. It allows me to persevere against the inconsideration of these arena-rock crowds, it buoys me from the shallows of despair, and it sweetens my ponderment, dulling its geekier edges. We couldn't help but love each other, not because we were perfect, but because we were perfect to each other; we were made in each others' image.
And these other yap-hounds, they just couldn't stop complaining about the traffic.
]]> </p>As it turned out, one of the charming painters down the block, who have been coloring a nice old apartment building with considerable pluck and courage (for example, hopping their ladders to the left and right, while still perched, when they can't reach a certain spot) had cherry-picked himself into a nearby power line. By eyewitness accounts, he was flung out of the cherry-picker onto the sidewalk, where he apparently landed still living. Unfortunately, he didn't stay that way as long as one would have hoped.
He didn't go out without a fight. The cherry-picker sits with two enormous deflated tires, surrounded by charred grass with a white corroded-looking substance. Neighbors stand around gazing at the scene and saying things like, "He was the one with dark curly hair and a bald spot, really nice," and "Jesu Maria."
]]> </p>We were both extremely critical of social convention, and hyper-rationalistic, believing every true thing had a knowable reason, so we used this to justify our retreat from the social morass of our childhood. People were harsh and arbitrary, and on top of that, corrupt: everything seemed to be done the wrong way—it was simple to see the best way, we thought. If only people had the courage to see that truth, life would fall out like a pleasant puzzle. As I got older, I started to see human beings as organic, our needs as much more contingent, and our means in all their variety. For very personal reasons (deep, inexorable love) I suddenly invested myself in this humanism. I wanted to find whatever relative truth I could about it, like those specious astronomical symbols that sailors once navigated by. Then I had a series of epiphanies that led me to see artistic production as the way of understanding this world. This is the prequel to the story I told him, which starts with fiction and leads thru film and theatre. Reading performance and dramatic theory in college turned my views around. In '96, I wanted messages to come neatly packaged, but by '98 I saw what a wild polysemy we have on our hands when we go to the theatre, and how sophisticated we need to be as spectators. But I still have the same yearning that was uncovered ten years ago when I was deeply, inexorably in love, and still trying to unwind the mystery of that feeling through the medium of theatre. In a sense, life is too complicated for non-fiction alone. Theatre is more complex, even if it's inarticulate—the same goes for film, photography, painting, and certain other modes. If nothing else, "art" can give us a pinprick of awareness that helps us to live more openly and, well, awarely.
]]> </p>But your question, "Can you see a movie without analyzing it?" sought my response to the film as a dream, not as a series of techniques. I admit: making an inventory of movies' techniques is only useful to movie craftsmen. My apologies to all those offended.
My dream-response to Minority Report: the technology is frightfully real (and delightfully near); Agatha is a very strong and personal character for me: she is essentially human and yet she has an experience radically different from the other characters, due to her "gift" ("Is this now?" she says, in her first compelling, unfamiliar experience since childhood); John's plight was not especially frightening for me, because he handled it so well. And finally: that biatch in the greenhouse is rad.
]]> </p>]]> </p>206
The Flower must not blame the Bee—
That seeketh his felicity
Too often at her door—
But teach the Footman from Vevay—
Mistress is "not at home" to say—
To people—any more!
—Emily Dickinson
I'm quitting because my manager pisses me off. As a result, I'm leaving about two weeks before the end of school ("School?" you say. Yes, school, I say.) and missing graduation with all my friends. This is OK, because I already have a college diploma. I've said goodbye to all the old friends (some of whom I know from Seattle) and on my way out I start to say goodbye to Mr. Wolfe.
He says we'll go up to the new fourth-floor library, with the big circular window. We go up and look out the window watching all the kids stream out and mill around on the grass. Mr. Wolfe asks calmly if my Dad is going to come by. Tears stream down my face and I try to remember everything Mr. Wolfe was to me and everything he would never be again.
Between the tears and goodbye, I wake up.
If it doesn't make sense to you, it's because you weren't asleep.
]]> </p>There were several encouraging Pride moments, though. A young gal with one breast and a custom bikini top (one triangle, left-side) was gadding about at the edge of the parade, dissolved and enjoying herself. A couple of skinny girls, both of whom had a ring through each nipple, wore short pieces of black electrical tape, like litle TV-censor bands. They stood on top of a low brick wall for a better view and smoked over the top of us. Not sure how they managed to look neither snooty, nor embarrassed; they just stood there, watching.
Another couple of gals were wearing two big orange stickers on their breasts, as if they'd just discovered them. These two seemed more intent on defying convention than the first two. I saw them at the rally; they were dancing out in front of the crowd, even after everyone else sat down. Kudos for not being embarrassed—but they seemed intent on demonstrating to everyone that they had cast off the motherly gaze.
A third couple wore nothing at all above the waist, but inlaid themselves with signifiers by way of Sharpie.
An occasional fellow was attractive, too. A couple of sleek-bodied blondes dancing together on the prow of a motorboat made me think of Tom Ripley and Dickie Greenleaf—in a less complicated relationship, perhaps. Their voluptuousness, their willingness to be less-than-masterful—even silly—reminded me of something: women. Physically, they were very clearly men; they weren't even in drag. But in motion, they were female: they performed their dances for our gaze, to become the object of our attention. They exhibited themselves. For a moment I could put myself in one's shoes: We're going out to the cottage this weekend, my boyfriend is going to be there, he's going to be dancing like this on the pier; I'm going to put my arms around him and we shall be blissful. Then it dissolved, frog into the reflection.
]]> </p>Just this past weekend in Seattle, a Port Angeleno came to town and ran a Forum. It was, as Forum always is, both frustrating and exciting. And remarkably interesting.
In Forum Theatre, a cast presents a scene, called a "model," in which the protagonist is in some sense oppressed. The scene is run several times, and after having seen it once, the audience is encouraged to yell "Stop," take the place of the protagonist on stage, and change the course of the action. The cast will improvise, as the spectator (now a "spect-actor") alters the situation, and the onus is on said cast to keep the oppression strong, even as the new spect-actor resists.
My experiences with Forum Theatre are the only truly communal public experiences I can remember, where a group of relative strangers partakes fully in civic life. The ancient Roman fora and the Navajo councils must have had this quality, but our own public life is almost always isolated, and our communal life is almost always private. This is most apallingly true of art galleries, museums, musical performances, and theatre pieces, all of which ostensibly exist for the very purpose of engendering a public dialogue. But can anyone here remember even talking to a stranger at an art gallery? Anyone? Anyone?
It may be possible not to participate in a Forum Theatre event, but it is not easy. The models are never high art (they're typically short on nuance) but the model should manifest an experience of real contemporary life. This can be done well or poorly, and how well the model is constructed will influence the audience participation; but overwhelmingly, this is a people's art, and people do participate.
Boal quotes Lope de Vega: "Theatre is two people, one passion, and a platform." He adds, "I agree with him, you have to have two people. And also I agree, there has to be some passion, they both have to care about something. But as for the platform, I don't care, you can leave that aside."
As soon as I step into a Forum model, I know that a hundred eyes are judging my ethos, my way-about-me, my behavior. I intend to act truly—but I will I act rightly? In the eyes of my peers?
The protagonist I replaced in last weekend's Forum was a homeless mother of two. Our Joker (Forum's Master of Ceremonies) verified that I knew I was playing a homeless woman, and not a man. Does anyone know what that means? No? Good. Neither do I. In the scene, a yuppie blows off this character when she asks for change. In my intervention, I yelled and interrupted his conversation.
Surely there's no reason why a woman can't be as vocal as a man, although it may be difficult to overcome that internalized inertia that keeps us all in our place. It was hard enough for me, as a man, to become as outspoken as I am. But our Joker shooed me aside as a man of privilege who had nothing to contribute to the plight of a homeless woman. This was a mistake, I believe; what role can I have in politics, if I am assumed to be supremely privileged and unable to identify with an oppressed character? There are cracks in my privilege—there are faultlines. "Charity," as Boal's mentor Paolo Freire said, "Is the first tool of the oppressor." And in Boal's, Freire's and my own understanding of oppression, only the oppressed can overcome it; we cannot wait for the oppressor to turn his head.
Forum Theatre in America always risks being dilatory: only educated white people seem to attend. Are we to engineer our own liberation? From what? From guilt? Should we condescend to another class of people by offering trite solutions brewed in the thin broth of freedom? We will be irrelevant, if that is all. But we always learn something about our own community and how it works, as soon as we step on stage, as soon as we take on another role, and as soon as the eyes of the others are upon us.
]]> </p>]]> </p>3.2. Definition. Let X be a topological space, then X is said to be compact provided each open cover of X contains a finite cover. (Here "open" refers to a property of the Da, while "finite" refers to a property of the indexing set A.)
The following picture of the notion may help. Suppose a large crowd of people (possibly infinite) is standing out in the rain, and suppose each of these people puts up his umbrella, then they will all stay dry. It is, of course, possible that they are all crowded so compactly together that not all, but merely a finite number of them need put up their umbrellas, and still they will all stay dry. We could then think of them as forming some sort of compact space. It is, of course, assumed in all this that the umbrellas are open.
—John D. Baum, Elements of Point Set Topology
