Rantings and Ramblings

Kurt Vonnegut dies at 84, Wednesday night.

Slaughterhouse 5 remains one of my favorite books of all time. He is a significant reason why I write today.

A sad day, truly.

-Brian

So it goes.

I was going to write another post on strictly Invisible Man, but I find that all I want to discuss is going into my paper, and I’d like not to be redundant to myself. I might be able to swing this post towards IM but who knows.

So I will start of this post like the last one, with a single line that I a mulling over in my head. This line comes from the beginning of Neil Gaiman’s newest collection of short stories called “Fragile Things”.

The line reads, “I think…that I would rather recollect a life mis-spent on fragile things than spent avoiding moral debt.”(xi) Gaiman wrote these words upon waking from a dream, not knowing what or to whom it was meant. The line, he has said, haunts him, just as it haunts me.

So, what could the fragile things be? Are they truly worth recollecting? Gaiman also said, “The peculiarity of most things we think of as fragile are how tough they really are.” Does fragility only apply to the strength of things under physical pressure? Mental strength under emotional pressure? What kinds of things are fragile in life that are worth recollecting?

I see fragile things based on scale of importance to the individual, rather than the strength involved. The stronger the connection, the more fragile the object. Gaiman’s book cover is graced with images of a butterfly’s wings, and snowflakes, but it is also graced with a striking image of a scientifically labeled picture of a heart.

“…than spent avoiding moral debt,” gives me an even bigger problem. What is moral debt to begin with? The word “debt” brings all kinds of not-likable things to mind, a state of owe that nobody wants to be locked into. “Avoiding” is just another word for hiding, or taking alternate paths that do not cross with one of “moral debt”. So is Gaiman saying that he would rather recollect on a life “mis-spent” (wasted?) on fragile things (the most important, delicate, ideas in life, regardless of strength of bond or physical structure?) than “spent avoiding moral debt” (dodging situations for strong bonds with fragile things?)?

Would the Invisible Man feel this way? I’m not sure he would. To me, it seems like he is spending a great amount of time avoiding moral debt, avoiding the specific kinds of strong bonds with the fragile things in his life, or fragile things that could be in his life (a family?). It now seems to me that a quote from someone’s dream that I have been mulling over can be applied to, and may be, a significant role in the Invisible Man’s internal struggle.

What do you think?

-Brian

“Neither the music nor the dance is binding”

I have been mulling over this phrase for a while now, and can’t seem to officially put my finger on its exact meaning. Even as I sit here, staring at it in this text box, I am struggling to even find the words I want to post on it. It’s frustrating, really, but it’s the appropriate kind of frustration from such a loaded sentence.

Maybe it’s referring to that neither the oppression or how the oppressed deal with it is “binding”. That there is no real obligation to stick to how you originally react or act, but the ability to change your stance and procedures as you grow and learn.

In that case, it would deal directly with the Invisible Man and how he handles being invisible. From unknowing to knowing, to how he can shift and change how he chooses to accept, reject, or handle it.

Edit: Check out the “Recommendations” tab, I reviewed a movie for your pleasure.

The Decalogue

Krzysztof Kieslowski’s ten part Decalogue is gorgeous and well written and pretty depressing at some times. But then again, so is religion.

The first of the 10 mini-movies sets the style for the 9 that follow it. Set mostly in the same housing complex, the stories are not complex in their message, but rather the thoughts the messages provoke. This one is tackling an issue of science vs. faith, and is loosely based on the first commandment.

For me, the entire hour film culminates to one visual that Kieslowski shows us, his audience. That visual is the where the father is holding the frozen holy water to his forehead. I haven’t really cracked the entire message of it, but this is the most important scene in the whole first hour of the ten. I’m sure it has to do something with his faith being frozen for most of the hour, and the heat and emotion from the day melting it. But it also shines back to the whole motif of ice and melting throughout the film. I’d have to watch it a few more times. I’ve only seen it 3 times so far.

I was impressed to hear we were watching this. I hope we can watch some of the Three Colors trilogy though, which in my opinion is his masterpiece.

Alright, sorry for the delay. I can finally breathe now that a few midterms are over.

So, what I kinda want to discuss briefly is sort of a continuation of that we were talking about in class about C. Temple. I didn’t bring it up in class, because I knew it would be a pretty rad post, so I saved it.

The idea of the author breaking narrative: I don’t like it. At all. Breaking the narrative is a big no, even if you are trying to preemptively defend things you’re doing in the book. Have an afterword or something to do your defending, because I don’t want to be taken out of the story at all. Not only does it take the reader out of the narrative, but it also dumbs down the audience and reflects poorly on how she views her own writing ability. It’s as if she has no confidence in getting her point across transparently so she has to spell it out for us. Maybe I would feel different back in the day it was written, but I can’t change my 21st century mindset. I would actually like to read a version without the asides, just to see how it compares.

Not sure how rad that turned out to be, but it’s kinda a pet peeve when author does that, especially for argumentative reasons than reasons dealing with the realm of the story.

Brian

I’m sorry for the delay of my post, but I am pretty swamped right now.

I should have the response ready sometime later this evening, or early tomorrow morning. Just didn’t want people to think I forgot or anything.

Brian

Edit: And for some reason it says Feb 27th up there but it totally isn’t yet. I would know, the 27th is my birthday.

The Tempest. Well, I enjoyed both versions we took in, and I wonder if anybody feels the same way. One of the major differences between the mediums that I could point out (beyond that of film qualities like shot reverse shot for dialogue and subject focus…I’m a film major too) would be how powerful the final epilogue became when watching it performed rather than reading it.

For some reason, when I read a play I just read it as an invisible spectator rather than someone who is actually in the audience, if that makes sense. So when viewing the movie, I felt more a part of a collective audience and when Prospero addressed us I felt like the choice of his fate really was up to me. It became this powerful moment coupled with the actor directly looking into the lens (always an attention grabber) that I feel was lost in the text.

I think that somehow this plays into the use of magic in the play, that somehow Prospero is able to address us directly. It is almost as if he’s reliving the experience – showing of the play after showing of the play – and he get’s fed up with it ending where it does. I don’t know, I’d have to think about this further, but I feel as if by this choice that Shakespeare is presenting much more than just a story, but rather something that is able to cross realities. Some people had brought up that they thought that it was Shakespeare himself that the epilogue was supposed to represent. This could very well be. Maybe he feels trapped in the elements of his stories, seeing as the play is almost a huge mixture of what he’s dealt with in the past, and add upon that the idea of being trapped or enslaved that the play radiates then I would not be surprised if this was an actual inward reflection on Shakespeare’s part.

Brian