Not Getting it...

One of the perils of upheavals & periods of self-reflection is things that don't really warrant the level of scrutiny being caught up anyway.

Recently, I've been playing Braid and reading The God of Small Things.

And I don't particularly like either of them.

Which means, that with the critical acclaim for both of them, I'm wondering just how out of step I am with general consensus and am I missing out on some essential experiences.

I've spoken to a number of people specifically about Braid and what bothers me about it. I feel like, with specific puzzles, it breaks the contract it's established with the player. I find the writing overwrought. When I'm playing it, I feel as though I'm trying to work out the precise steps the designer wants me to go through, and not in a supportive way, but in a confrontational, take it or leave it way. I appreciate what it's doing on an intellectual level, and at the core, I agree with that, but it leaves me cold. You only have to look at the critical response to it though to see that I'm clearly the minority.

With The God of Small Things, I found myself scrabbling for something to anchor me to the story. I'm not sure if it was the unfamiliarity of the names, or the flowery style, but I couldn't engage with it really until near the end, and even then, the stylistic flourishes were almost overwhelming. There's an overabundance of simile and imagery, which on a number of occasions stuck out like a sore thumb for me. At best, the author's voice stretched just a little too far, added too much to the description, and reminded me that I was reading a story, something constructed, and that there was an authorial voice behind everything. At worst, I found myself questioning the choice of image & simile rather than letting it enhance the effect of the writing, kicking me out even further. If I hadn't had to read it for class, I doubt I would have made it further than a quarter of the way in.

This isn't the first time I've wondered if I knew what the hell I was talking about. I've attended short film screenings and disliked every film shown while the audience has laughed and applauded around me. I've gone through short story collections and found nothing engaging in any of them while reviews praise the economy & diversity of the content. I've strolled through art galleries with friends and argued about why I didn't like the work at dinner afterwards.

It's a strange feeling trying to present constructive arguments why you didn't connect with something because it forces you to confront your own tastes and preferences (something that's happening with some regularity at the moment anyway) and still feel that there's probably nothing anyone can say to sway your opinion, nothing you can say to sway theres, and that somehow, in some small or large way, you simply don't get it.

The dangers of bookshops...

This morning, I had only intended on buying a few books. Definitely 101 things I learned in Architecture School and The writer's block; possibly The Wasteland by T.S. Eliot and A Doll's House by Henrik Ibsen for my Myths and Symbols class.

Due to a total lack of self control, I find myself with the first two books and also the following:

A second hand copy of The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron
The complete dictionary of symbols in myth, art, and literature
The Plague by Albert Camus (yet another therapist recommendation. Hopefully I'll get through the simile-riddled prose of God of Small things this weekend and have time for this too)
Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie, which has been on my to read list for some time.
Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable.

Only some of these were second hand. I may need to curb the retail section of my therapy until I've done my tax.

Unblocking

I've had writer's block for probably the past 6 months, strangely coinciding with my personal life taking a lengthy turn for the worst. There've been flashes of work - I've read my novel and have a wall covered in index cards; I've done some research for possible freelance work, and I did about a week of morning pages from The Artist's Way. Recently I've taken steps to try to solve the problem, including buying, slightly unecessary, expensive gadgets, setting up the start of a fiction blog, and wondering about buying a whiteboard.

None of that's really worked.

But, last week and tonight in my Myths and Symbols class, we did some writing exercises where we made notes on an image, then wrote for 10 minutes on our notes & the image. What I've produced isn't great, but it is both unexpected and of a reasonable quality.

I just need to work out how I can transfer that freewriting to a different environment.

Or just try to sneak in rewriting the middle of my novel during the next few months of class.

Recovery

Week before last, my therapist had me read Man's Search For Meaning by Victor E. Frankl. It's an account of a psychotherapist's time in concentration camps during WW2 and his theory of therapy that grew out of that. I'm also re-reading Bloodletting by Victoria Leatham, an account of her self-injury and eventual recovery.

I find myself at a strange point. And part of that strangeness is these 2 books.

Coming at a time where I'd bottomed out, I read Man's Search For Meaning in one sitting and found part of myself responding to the existential ideas inside: why should we do things that make us miserable, that's just masochistic; and even when we are assaulted by things we have no control over, we can still choose our attitude to those things. It was the first time, and I realise I may have been slow, that I really understood what was meant by dignity in suffering.

I don't want to bandy around the words life-changing, mostly because I'm too cautious of change right now, especially knowing that it's likely that it won't hold and that I'll find myself spending my days in bed again, but today, and for the past few days, I have been feeling like there might be slow progress, and part of that is because of a subtle shift from reading the book. I still find it difficult to get up and do things, but I'm slowly trying to push through that. I still don't have any real sort of reason to get better, but I can feel the search scratching around at the back of my head, trying to find something, anything, that's going to give me a longer term anchor.

Bloodletting on the other hand gives me a more contemporary handle on what's going on. I can see bits of myself reflected back from the pages, and it's sobering and frightening and consoling all at the same time. I think what I'm taking from it this time, is the different, frequently unknowable, paths everyone takes, the extremes that sometimes we go to just to cope, and then that it's possible to get through it all and be ok.

I told a friend late last week that I felt as though I was in recovery, and I'm quietly hopeful. I wrote a big blog post a while back that I never posted about my frustrations about being able to remember being a better person and not really knowing how to, or really wanting to either, get back to that. Part of me still isn't sure that I do. But I guess we'll see.

Also, I'm being interviewed for the telly tomorrow. Past performances can be seen here. I suspect the need to be at least partially functional and presentable may have something to do with me making an effort :)

Synchronicity...

I've been listening to the new album by Amanda Palmer from the Dresden Dolls. It's less...harsh, I think, than the Dresden Dolls, and it feels more personal. There's a playfulness to the Dolls that's missing here, but I really like it. Especially Have To Drive, The Point of It All, and Another Year. They feel like they sum up better than I can at the moment, just how I'm feeling about things.

Anyway, this is really just a long-winded way of posting this.

Things that it might not be cool to do...

Item 1
Watch Dexter on your laptop on a crowded morning tram heading into the city.

Still to come, some stuff on the short story collections...and some thoughts on this book, as recommended by my therapist.

The blog isn't dead...

I wrote quite a lengthy post about what's been going on with me for the past few months in an attempt to articulate some of the things I've found unable to express in other forms...

But I deleted it.

I think there are things perhaps better left unexposed in such a public space.

Shame.

Or not.

Coming up next, a comparison of the 2 most recent short story collections I read.

Game Off

Game on at ACMI finishes up this week, and sadly I didn't get to make another visit beyond attending the opening. Those of you who know me, know that this past 5 or 6 months haven't exactly been the most delightful, and so while I'm saddened not to have made it, I think that I'm ok with other things taking priority.

Way back before Game On opened, me and another friend of mine were talking about starting a games related blog because we thought that the critical writing about video games in Australia was seriously lacking. That all fell through because, well, for a whole host of reasons, but with the introduction of this blog, I wanted to write one of the posts originally intended for that one.

Here it is, 5 months later, and perhaps with added insight....

I have a sadly fragmented memory of childhood, and one of my long-standing personal issues is that I lack strong positive memories of growing up. It's filled with arguments and shouting and fighting and struggling for some sort of identity within boundaries that were unclear and enforced at random intervals with unpredictable ferocity. As a result, or perhaps because of nature rather than nurture, I tended towards the insular as a child, preferring books or computers or some solitary thing instead of being outside kicking a football against a wall as I was so frequently ordered to do.

As a family, like all families do, we used to go on holidays. Long car journeys with infrequent stops and more arguments and more fighting and the final destination of a caravan site where we'd spend the following 2 weeks desperately trying to fill the time...

Like much of my childhood, the memories of those collections of two week periods aren't exactly positive. This is something I'd been thinking about a lot at the turn of this year, prompted no doubt by the coming upheaval and the bubbling tensions between me and my family that had just found their way to the surface again.

Amidst all this, I scored tickets for the opening of Game On.

And there, in the exhibition space of ACMI, I found something positive from my childhood.

They had a sit-down Star Wars arcade game. Faded black and blue paint. Green and red vector lines. A loose controller with slightly spongey buttons. A really, really, really, uncomfortable seat.

And an escape from all of the stuff that was going on when I was much younger.

I remember going to the arcades either inside or near the caravan parks and changing the meager money I was allowed to spend on the games and playing Star Wars or the inferior isometric Return of the Jedi or Operation Wolf or any of the other, less appealing games without special controllers or guns or sit-in cabinets, only wobbly joysticks and broken off buttons. I remember that those games were the highlights of my day, and of the weeks, and of the holidays.

Those games are the positive memories I have of my childhood.

And they were brought back by just seeing that old, faded, battered, but still working, Star Wars cabinet.

When I first bandied the idea for this post around, months and months ago, I was thinking about the games as art debate which kicks around and always seems sort of foolish to me, so I won't get into it, but what I was thinking was that, even if games weren't art, who cares. Isn't escapism enough? Isn't the fact that they've made somebody's life better enough? Aspiring for high art is great, but it isn't only high art that can affect someone, that sends them on a new path through life, or that helps them get through whatever it is that they need to get through.

I'm sure the people who made the Star Wars game were just trying to entertain, but I'm glad they managed to do something more than that.

children can be so cruel

So, in my millions of email spam, I got (one could argue this was still spam) an email from friends reunited.

This is one of those sites that purports to reconnect you with everyone you hoped you'd forgotten, old schools, old workplaces, old lives.

Driven by a desire to not do the washing up, I clicked the link to see what "Rachel" was doing. I have by the way, no earthly idea which Rachel this is. But once you're there, it's a time suck, and you randomly start clicking on names you recognise. Some of these were among the first non-family people I knew. The kid who always swore (even in primary school - Corky, that's you), the girl who looked like a horse, these were all part of the people who formed a human map around your (who am I kidding - my) early years. A geography of school uniforms and scabbed knees.

And even as we all grew older, I now get to find out that the girl who created food nicknames for everyone, wrestled her sister in the sixth form common room (even for the rest of us, that was like, really immature) and most importantly, tried to buy Roy Orbison tickets after he was dead, is now practicing employment law (and presumably no longer wrestling her older sister).

It's weird to see that people all grew up and are responsible adults (one is a priest "but I'm an anglican, so I can still have sex and all that". Well it's good you're putting it to some use, Blackhead, cause I have spoken to other people who still remember the time you got a massive erection while on stage as the lead in the Mikado. I'm sorry we didn't make any waist high scenery in the art department.) Also, Blackhead, you were raised as a Catholic - wtf?!

The big boys in class, who were always a little intimidating, have lost their bluster. The nicknames have lost their toughness, making the bearers of them seem faded, shells, bewildered by age. Small boys, lost in casual friday attire, or the weekend perennials of cream pants and blue shirts.

I wonder if their lives feel small.

One thing that strikes me though, is the profile of a kid who was a couple of years below me in school, the kid people picked on, and yet either completely didn't realise this, or was totally resilient or un-phased by it. He was the kid who stole five pounds, and then was busted trying to buy five pounds worth of marathon bars at the tuck shop. His profile now includes his jobs as a bin man, bus driver and scrap metal yard worker (all jobs that someone has to do, but this person being allowed to drive a double decker bus is a scary thought) and that he likes the barmaid at his local. He writes completely in upper case, and, like heaps of people on that site, reconfigures his email address, to bypass people having to buy an account in order to contact him. I wonder if anyone ever does.

But the saddest thing - and also the thing that I pissed myself laughing at - is that, in typing his surname as part of his email address, he misses one letter, which changes the context significantly.

It now spells "Boner".

Fire Songs - The Watson Twins

I was thinking of writing mini reviews of things I came across in my life - books, music, films, games, those sorts of things - but I'm currently listening to Fire Songs by The Watson Twins and I realised that there are limits to what I can write about when it comes to music.

Music hasn't always been a big part of my life. I remember coming to the experience late. There wasn't a great deal of it around the house growing up, just my parent's feeble vinyl collection and the novelty of taping the top 40 from the radio and listening to it on my walkman over and over again until the following week. The music itself didn't really matter to me. It was something there, but not something that I really connected with in any strong way.

And this is where the story shifts into potentially embarrassing self-revelation.

I remember buying my first album from a band where I really felt some small connection to the songs: A cassette of Automatic for the People by REM, released in (check's wikipedia...) 1992. I was 14 years old and Everybody Hurts was being played to death. As people have been pointing out to me recently, I was kind of a late bloomer, so I was just starting to feel the first hints of adult emotion and thinking, goddammit, everybody does hurt, they're right!

It's not a deep revelation. But 14 year old, socially inept nerd-boys aren't known for their startling insight.

Everybody Hurts is not a great song, nor a song that I would listen to now (Drive and Sweetness Follows are both far more interesting, and have higher ratings on my iTunes), but it is one of those songs that captures some essential part of my youth.

In the years since that first cassette, I've gone from tapes to CDs to mp3s; from a chunky walkman to being able to carry my entire collection around in my pocket; from being a socially inept nerd-boy to a socially inept nerd-man.

One thing I haven't done though, is work out why music works for me.

I write. Short films, short stories, novels, comics, occasionally video games, that sort of thing. I've been doing it for long enough that I have a fairly good understanding of how narrative works, how stories fit together, what words do when you put them next to each other, and how my aesthetic sense gels, or doesn't gel, with certain works. I can articulate those things, and hopefully that's something I'll do more of in this blog as I read and watch and play more.

But how music works, eludes me.

I don't have a context for why something works, or where it fits historically, or how it has been influenced by what's come before, or why certain chords sound good together, or why one song works and one doesn't, and listening to Fire Songs, I want to write a serious response to it, but I can't. I'm brought short by limitations in my knowledge and limitations in my experience as a listener.

And that's fine, because I'd probably spend more time analysing why I liked something, rather than just enjoying what I do like, and there's only so much space and time in life for naval gazing.

And, no doubt, there will be more, much more, of that as this blog quietly ages.

Oh, and Fire Songs is an awesome album too.

Ze purpose of ze blog

This is somewhere to talk about stuff other than your job. Because, apparently, there has to be more out there. Somewhere.

Also, I have blogfright from having to write the first post. And, picturing you all in your underwear is giving me that funny feeling... If you need me, I'll be in my bunk.