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.

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."

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.

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."

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.

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.

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

]]> </p> 2011-10-29T19:17:20Z 2002-07-02T03:15:43Z tag:lettersunknown.com,2002://1.12 2002-07-02T03:15:43Z

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.

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.

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.

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 D_a, 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

]]> </p> 2011-10-02T02:03:46Z 2002-06-19T03:15:43Z tag:lettersunknown.com,2002://1.7 2002-06-19T03:15:43Z

When they evaluate a police officer for this job, they expect him to listen intently, and actively, to the subject—which is as likely to be a suicidal young man or woman as it is to be a violent criminal. And for this team, no jumper is too pathetic, too whiny, or too resistant to help. Anyone standing on a bridge, beyond a railing, is the officer's friend.

The suicidal man wants to believe that someone is his friend. Having lost everything, the only reason to wait is indecision—perhaps there's something out there, some soft human mind, that would prefer him alive. No tie into the rest of humanity is reason enough to think about ending life. But how to know that things won't improve? So we force the issue by taking ourselves to the point of no return, and waiting for a sign. Now, at the moment before death, will anyone believe in my despair? Will the slightest thing happen to deter me?

So when the police officer appears, you want to believe he cares. When you can tell he's listening to what you're saying, that he appreciates your problem, you latch on to him, you calm down, you remember what life was like, how warm it was, and still could be.

Now my question is: Why does the SPD handle these calls at all? They deal with a suicide every single day, and why? The team is candid, they joke—No SNL gag is beyond their ken. Their sense of life, their sense of humor, is on par with your basic bartender.

Why does a public servant, paid by tax dollars, spend hours talking to one woman on a bridge, no matter how unproductive, no matter how annoying that woman?

We value life, it seems. Isn't that funny? We value life.

For all their bravado, when it comes to the big fight at the end, they shrink into little boys, sucking on the dry straw of each other's support. Daniel has only Miyagi, and Miyagi is distant. He offers tech support: Karate technique, and that miraculous sprain-healing touch. But the boys of Kobra Kai see themselves first as members of a community—of like-minded and similarly-able friends: their role is to push each other to forget their inertia. A cocky front allows this (and turns me off) but when push comes to shove, suddenly they need support from their chums. In the ring, however, each player is alone.

Daniel's position seems much more honest; his fear falls back on himself, the wise old teacher who believed in him, and his love. The faces of Kobra Kai seem more desparate. The explicit ideology of the film has by this point led us to feel that whatever the outcome, Daniel wins a moral victory, because he has fought honestly—but still we want him to win materially.

When The Karate Kid was a dimly glowing memory in my grown-up mind, my Ultimate Frisbee team called itself Kobra Kai (through no fault of my own); "Sweep the leg, Johnny!" was its battle cry. If the movie pits a self-reliant individualist against a collective army, it has good company with other stories Americans love. But these sick individuals—my team—identified not with Miyagi's call ("Crane technique: If done right, no can defend") but instead with Kobra Kai's mantra: success at any cost. Mazel tov, then.