I'm currently reading a book called The Best Short Stories of 2010 which, I assume you assumed, is a collection of short stories that two supposed experts on short stories decided were the best to be featured in their book.
It's a great read, but it seems that every story lacks an uplifting and optimistic ending or tone. It's almost as if the short story writers of 2010 found it naive or out of style to utilize any archetypal optimism, and they all attempted to achieve a sublime realism like it was the new fad. They all seem to try and explicate the vastness of the human soul, but they all see it in a similar shade of gray. Or whatever color it would be if a splash of red mixed with the gray in the far lower corner of the soul.
Not to say they're not good; in fact, they're brilliant. But they're a kind of brilliance that seems to blend together like if I put them all in a clear plastic bag and shook it around really fast. They don't vary; they're just variations of the same thing.
However, I'm being unfair. I'm a good number of pages past halfway, but there are still a few stories left to read, written by some writers yet discovered by me. I just keep finding myself hoping that maybe they subconsciously saved the best for last. I mean, even if you weren't intending to, with a book title like The Best Short Stories of 2010, wouldn't you put the better ones toward the back?
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
Lovestruck with Luv(sic)
This song is the perfect song.
It's emotional without being radical-- this permits it to defy time because, let's face it, we are all emotionally driven without always being emotionally charged. Whether I'm tending a broken heart or I'm just considering life at arms' length, this song offers itself as the perfect reason to close my eyes and reflect.
It's a perfect testimony to music-- the jazz sampling, the basic rhythm through that perfectly simple beat, the testimony to hip hop, the meta "music about music" lyrics just accentuates what love for music should be and is through this song.
I get lost listening to this. It's perfectly varying and repetitive. The harmony and melody come together so poetically, it makes me wanna freakin' cry. The lyrics are just deep enough without being pretentious, the key is perfect for reflection. There are just enough segments without drums to take that moment of breath right before delving into it again, reflective of the moments of silence life itself should have.
I don't know. It's perfect.
RIP Nujabes
It's emotional without being radical-- this permits it to defy time because, let's face it, we are all emotionally driven without always being emotionally charged. Whether I'm tending a broken heart or I'm just considering life at arms' length, this song offers itself as the perfect reason to close my eyes and reflect.
It's a perfect testimony to music-- the jazz sampling, the basic rhythm through that perfectly simple beat, the testimony to hip hop, the meta "music about music" lyrics just accentuates what love for music should be and is through this song.
I get lost listening to this. It's perfectly varying and repetitive. The harmony and melody come together so poetically, it makes me wanna freakin' cry. The lyrics are just deep enough without being pretentious, the key is perfect for reflection. There are just enough segments without drums to take that moment of breath right before delving into it again, reflective of the moments of silence life itself should have.
I don't know. It's perfect.
RIP Nujabes
Two selves of a Whole
It's a great battle we wage against ourselves. Everyone must wage it, and everyone must win if they hope to pursue a greater triumph of the soul. But if the war is between two selves of the same whole, then there is an innate dilemma that presents itself in a two-dimensional choice-- one must identify with the winning self, and one must identify with the better self. To claim one and disregard the other is to fail because one offers the means while the other offers the direction. How utterly useless would it be to put on the shoes to walk, but cannot find the way?
When I say 'better self' I am, of course, referring to a morally superior half-- because to identify with the winning self that is not also morally conscious is to succeed at failing. And to only choose the morally upright half that is not also the winning half is to fail at succeeding.
I personally think I am the latter; that is, I identify with the moral side of the battle, but I confess that it is the losing side. I feel the anxiety of an impending doom-- though all strategic maneuvers have seemed to fail, I keep hoping for a miracle, one small enough to occur in someone as insignificant and undeserving as me, to change the course of this losing battle.
When I say 'better self' I am, of course, referring to a morally superior half-- because to identify with the winning self that is not also morally conscious is to succeed at failing. And to only choose the morally upright half that is not also the winning half is to fail at succeeding.
I personally think I am the latter; that is, I identify with the moral side of the battle, but I confess that it is the losing side. I feel the anxiety of an impending doom-- though all strategic maneuvers have seemed to fail, I keep hoping for a miracle, one small enough to occur in someone as insignificant and undeserving as me, to change the course of this losing battle.
Saturday, January 8, 2011
Outliers
I'm currently reading Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell, and it's become a sort of a struggle to read it. I like it because it carries a sort of optimism in its words, but it just doesn't feel authentic. That's how I've felt about Gladwell's other two books as well, Tipping Point and Blink. I don't know how to describe it, but it seems as if he uses all the facts he's collected exclusively to serve his own purpose-- they don't sound as if they'd advocate his points, and yet he makes it so through his diction. Alas, I read this book with a dubious mind.
However, there is something else that this book makes me feel, and it is a frustration of my failures, or rather, a desire to succeed. I feel that I must take what I learned from the book and flourish in my element-- and I am in the peculiar position of currently being in my self-prescribed element, i.e. a classroom, at the moment I want to succeed in it.
However, I've really been feeling the fatigue and frustrations of teaching day in and day out. I've been feeling my body literally become slow to move, and I've been forcing myself to become enthusiastic for my students, a decision all too conscious for its effort and so severely considered in the moment.
But I imagine this is the exact circumstance required to overcome and excel. If I am not fatigued, then how else would I feel so great about my achievements if I am, truthfully, not really achieving anything? And so, tired as my arms feel to raise them, I do-- to embrace the present and coming challenges, to use each day as a block to build the facade that is my confidence, a process slowly done but surely made, and to one day look back and just feel the magnitude of the mountain I just climbed resolutely beneath my feet.
However, there is something else that this book makes me feel, and it is a frustration of my failures, or rather, a desire to succeed. I feel that I must take what I learned from the book and flourish in my element-- and I am in the peculiar position of currently being in my self-prescribed element, i.e. a classroom, at the moment I want to succeed in it.
However, I've really been feeling the fatigue and frustrations of teaching day in and day out. I've been feeling my body literally become slow to move, and I've been forcing myself to become enthusiastic for my students, a decision all too conscious for its effort and so severely considered in the moment.
But I imagine this is the exact circumstance required to overcome and excel. If I am not fatigued, then how else would I feel so great about my achievements if I am, truthfully, not really achieving anything? And so, tired as my arms feel to raise them, I do-- to embrace the present and coming challenges, to use each day as a block to build the facade that is my confidence, a process slowly done but surely made, and to one day look back and just feel the magnitude of the mountain I just climbed resolutely beneath my feet.
Sunday, January 2, 2011
War and Peace
After an arduous, but completely satisfying, two and a half months, I turned the last page of War and Peace.
I've gotta admit that it wasn't easy getting through some parts, but many others had my eyes glued to the pages, sometimes reading when it was definitely not a good time to be reading, i.e. during work. This is the longest I've read a single novel, and although I know that I don't completely grasp all that Tolstoy was trying to accomplish with it, I have absolutely fallen in love with his book.
Leo Tolstoy has risen to the top of my list of authors, not because of all the things I've heard about him, but because he simply is, almost effortlessly, the best writer I know. He flawlessly executes sentences that speak in volumes using a most concise diction-- he doesn't waste words trying to do what can be done with a few quaint phrases.
But more than that, I love who he was, or who I believe him to have been through what I've read. He's vastly knowledgeable of high society, and yet he subtly seems to indicate through his speculations that he is disagreeable towards the gentry-- I think he speaks through Pierre who, although, is not a part of the aristocracy by upbringing, suddenly finds himself in such company due to a large fortune left to him by his late illegitimate father. I think Tolstoy identifies with Pierre the most, as he becomes the richest character with the most depth, undergoing the biggest arc of change throughout the entire one and a half thousand pages of the novel.
And just who do I believe Tolstoy to have been? A God-fearing lover of Man, not for their actions but for their potential, a true idealist who believes in change through patience, a man who advocates that the best change for the abstract world comes from loving the ones immediately around us and that real change begins with what we know. I love him for being idealistic in the most realistic way one can be.
It was just a really great book by a really great author.
I've gotta admit that it wasn't easy getting through some parts, but many others had my eyes glued to the pages, sometimes reading when it was definitely not a good time to be reading, i.e. during work. This is the longest I've read a single novel, and although I know that I don't completely grasp all that Tolstoy was trying to accomplish with it, I have absolutely fallen in love with his book.
Leo Tolstoy has risen to the top of my list of authors, not because of all the things I've heard about him, but because he simply is, almost effortlessly, the best writer I know. He flawlessly executes sentences that speak in volumes using a most concise diction-- he doesn't waste words trying to do what can be done with a few quaint phrases.
But more than that, I love who he was, or who I believe him to have been through what I've read. He's vastly knowledgeable of high society, and yet he subtly seems to indicate through his speculations that he is disagreeable towards the gentry-- I think he speaks through Pierre who, although, is not a part of the aristocracy by upbringing, suddenly finds himself in such company due to a large fortune left to him by his late illegitimate father. I think Tolstoy identifies with Pierre the most, as he becomes the richest character with the most depth, undergoing the biggest arc of change throughout the entire one and a half thousand pages of the novel.
And just who do I believe Tolstoy to have been? A God-fearing lover of Man, not for their actions but for their potential, a true idealist who believes in change through patience, a man who advocates that the best change for the abstract world comes from loving the ones immediately around us and that real change begins with what we know. I love him for being idealistic in the most realistic way one can be.
It was just a really great book by a really great author.
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
A thought on alcohol
I have this notion that people become addicted to alcohol because people want to experience something genuine and true.
Alcohol lowers and diminishes inhibitions. This causes people to overstep their self-prescribed boundaries to express themselves more liberally. Alcohol leads groups of people to forget about insecurities to generally have a good time together.
What people become addicted to, I think, is the condition of genuine closeness they feel with other people, but they project this desire for human relations onto the alcohol since it's the alcohol that catalyzes these events. It's like loving the gasoline because we enjoy a nice car ride through the city or the countryside-- it's a displaced feeling of gratitude; we appreciate the connection, but we hold the alcohol responsible.
However, the alcohol does nothing but bring to the surface what we feel and desire. The more alcohol, it seems, the less inhibited, and so the more likely that a person will act on their immediate feelings-- no matter how untrue those feelings may seem in a bigger context.
A group of strangers may find themselves acting in every way like friends after a few drinks one night, but upon meeting again in a sober environment, they are again seemingly distant, as if all the conversations of that night had been nothing but an act encouraged by the alcohol. But what I think is that-- it is the night that had been genuine, and the ensuing awkwardness the act, put on by the insecurities and distance that people carefully construct around themselves.
But then that leads to the question.. why is it that we even need a social tool to catalyze circumstances into becoming mellifluous?
The only other place I've seen such carefree socializing with such personally genuine conversations in large groups has been... a church. I think people crave alcohol because they crave truthful interactions without the weight and hindrance of insecurities. And churches have been the only other places I've really ever seen that.
Well, at least that's what I think, anyway.
Alcohol lowers and diminishes inhibitions. This causes people to overstep their self-prescribed boundaries to express themselves more liberally. Alcohol leads groups of people to forget about insecurities to generally have a good time together.
What people become addicted to, I think, is the condition of genuine closeness they feel with other people, but they project this desire for human relations onto the alcohol since it's the alcohol that catalyzes these events. It's like loving the gasoline because we enjoy a nice car ride through the city or the countryside-- it's a displaced feeling of gratitude; we appreciate the connection, but we hold the alcohol responsible.
However, the alcohol does nothing but bring to the surface what we feel and desire. The more alcohol, it seems, the less inhibited, and so the more likely that a person will act on their immediate feelings-- no matter how untrue those feelings may seem in a bigger context.
A group of strangers may find themselves acting in every way like friends after a few drinks one night, but upon meeting again in a sober environment, they are again seemingly distant, as if all the conversations of that night had been nothing but an act encouraged by the alcohol. But what I think is that-- it is the night that had been genuine, and the ensuing awkwardness the act, put on by the insecurities and distance that people carefully construct around themselves.
But then that leads to the question.. why is it that we even need a social tool to catalyze circumstances into becoming mellifluous?
The only other place I've seen such carefree socializing with such personally genuine conversations in large groups has been... a church. I think people crave alcohol because they crave truthful interactions without the weight and hindrance of insecurities. And churches have been the only other places I've really ever seen that.
Well, at least that's what I think, anyway.
Sunday, December 12, 2010
The Mic
I've definitely come to terms with the fact that I'm not good enough to really go anywhere with rap, but there's something inexplicably enticing about the mic. I do it, literally, just to do it. It's so much effing FUN to simply... create.
I listen to a song and I think to myself something along the lines of "Oh, it would work well if, according to the drumbeats and that bass, if words were said like this." And what does any man want to do when one becomes so inextricable from a driving idea? We go after it.
I admit that nothing comes out ever the way I wish it did, and I know that has a lot to do with my lack of equipment and knowledge of the process. But it feels good to just see how it came out, and I only share because I don't know what else to do with it after I finish. I know it's not a grand scale aspiration, but when writing one line at a time, and upon meeting the mic, I just forget everything in my life to focus.
And that just feels good.
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