I'm thinking - the reason I am having such a hard time writing a new novel, is because creating a powerful new character is like starting a love affair and I am not really very good with short term relationships. Guys from underneath Zurnizip have been with me for over a decade and I intend to keep them around further still.. I've only ever dated two men in real life, both of whom I married, with a handful of physical encounters in the early college years I hardly remember now. They seemed interesting at the time, just can't remember why. You have to believe in your own people, especially if you conjure them out of nothing, thin air and thick ink, but you can't really do that for just one book. I think. Not unless you ant them to haunt you for the rest of your writing seasons.

Like any good addict, come second week of my abstinence, I am bombarded by temptation left, right and center. No longer physically suffering for the lack of caffeine, I now just really, really need it. Low cloud pressure, after-lunch lazyness, long work hours... Come on. I need it. Just one. Just one would make all the difference! To make matters worse, the world seems to be littered with coffee.. Coffee commercials everywhere! Cafes! Everywhere!... O.o

 

 

Few Siddharta pickies (I'll make more)

Had a great concert at the Met last night - Siddharta acoustic style. I've been to their megashows, but this was transcendent. Two hours flew by like a zooom!
I'll make oodles more of pickies, when I come around to it.
I made a noisy video to try and capture the mood. -->

Been a super long day. (Yesterday.) Will update plenty, when I come to. After I work on a bucket of other things. But I will. Promise.

"Beatnik"

Now I remember why I was never a musician. (You know, a drummer.) Well, also because I have no pitch and no sense of rhythm, but mainly, because I spook at the sound of noise. And there are people who handle this a whole lot better than I could.

He did this philosophical beat performance, explaining his story, how he got to stand before us. Some stuff was fairly scary (how he studied to be a mechanic and his colleagues killed another boy, half unintentionally, by accusing him of pederastry and pushing a compression pipe into his .... I think in real life this wasn't as much as a hate crime as a couple of boy fooling around without realising how dangerous it is. But I wasn't there, so...). Other stuff was mainly angry and, as his title refers, beaty. He used sentences such as: ..And there I learnt one thing: philosophers (or intellectuals, I don't remember rightly) can't dance, so they do their thinking sitting down!.... / ... Garbage sites are archaeological sites of human stupidity of the modern age! ... / I liked the story in which he is going to wipe his behind with old newspaper and noticed an old poem by Bukowski, about how to write better - in it the first thing you must do is find a large typewriter.) As at the time he was living on a garbage disposal site and constructing his instruments of statement from garbage. He found one pretty quickly. I'd believe that. It's something you'd quickly find in a dump site.

Primož Oberžan

Reading Cry, the Beloved Country. No idea why, as it's terribly sad and way above my usual reading standards, but it's just really good and after blowing my money on a really bad book the other day, I need to redeem my soul. Shame it was written by a white dude. It would really be awesome if it was written by a black dude.

Climbed higher still. 

I am oddly clever in this tempo, only doing little by little every time - four ascends, three of which are as high as the previous one and the last one just a little higher. True, the total lack of muscle is a factor, but I purposefully let go after getting a few feet further, even if I can see the next good step. 

Slowly, slowly, snail. I like this sport. I'm in no hurry to get stuck on a bigger problem than the next rung.

Nymphomaniac, the second deconstruction

Yup. First time didn't really quite satisfy me. Oh, burn :D

So, second time around.

Andet’s get one thing out of the way. I said I don’t like the Nymphomaniac movie(s). I didn’t say I don’t think they are good. I think they are great. In my opinion Von Trier is a behemoth. I also think FF Coppola is a behemoth of filmmaking and agree that his Godfathers are probably legendary, but I sure as hell don’t like them. Every time I tried watching them, all I got in my face was a bunch of psychopathic Neanderthals in suits, fucking one another over petty crime that grew way out of proportion, because their redneck village rejects mental evolution only ever allowed them to measure things in coin, death or pussy. But sure, yeah, those are outstandingly good movies.

No fast forwarding. No angry angle to begin with. Nymph from start to finish with a great respect and admiration for the author and for the … I dunno. Social commentary or one of those deep political excused for angst porn.

Here’s the thing. A great many strangers or semi strangers from the theater where I sell the tickets are keenly interested in talking about this film and I am always amazed that they actually haven’t seen half as many of Von Trier’s films – and I don’t really like angst. I get told that this is a very overrated, pompous author, an American film industry honey, biennale and festival darling, so on and so forth – mainly, that his hype is hollow. But I consider Von Trier to be a giant and not because of the previous two movies which I haven’t seen. (Doesn’t mean I don’t know them, I can just guarantee you I wouldn’t like them.) I will always think that Breaking the Waves the most beautiful and the saddest film ever made – and my first on-screen penis. (Second one, oddly enough, being Christian Slater’s.) I watch Dogville at least once a year and it’s ending ten times that much, obscenely satisfied with the righteousness  of its closure. I even thought Manderlay was excellent, if not really my cup of tea. Something about the heroine getting a taste of her own righteous medicine sat with me. That wasn’t even a matter of hubris, that was… Well, her father said it best – she is the most arrogant person there is. I am deeply grateful for the Dogma 95, of which Festen was the best and although not directly responsible for it, you can see his influence in the young Vinterberg in almost every scene. I remain to this day a dogma 95 filmmakress myself, though I am yet to finish that first gorram film.

This is not a deconstruction of why the film was good (or bad). It was very good for very many reasons. This is just the list of things why I hated it then and still hate it. He just didn’t satisfy my need for understanding why he hates romantic notion of relationships so much. He prances every male stereotype and misconception of a woman and then stomps a shitty boot on it… to boot. His heroine has no reason to be this fucking hollow – she is not a mental patient, as it is stresses she is self-diagnosed. She just deems herself to be the female equivalent of a rapist. And don’t even think about blaming her parents. My mother was a fucking nightmare while I was growing up, but it really is time to stop blaming your mother for your fucked-upness once you’re over thirty and get over yourself.

Easiest was out, let’s assume that Von Trier is angry and is trying to illustrate how terribly overrated all things considering a woman’s sexuality are.. Or in fact, women at all.

Starting with…

Getting beaten in a dirty alley. (It’s okay, she deserved it.)

Having a sexual appetite. (Makes a woman a bad human being.)

Losing her virginity. (She was asking for it.)

Hurtful anal sex. (Hey, if the arse is there, ram it.)

Humping strangers. (Dissatisfying, but the number counts.)

Infertility. (Woman’s fault, the man is always ready and able to spend seed.)

Oral sex is the worst. (It gets even the best of men undone.)

Woman thinking promiscuity is bad. (To a man that’s condescendingly funny.)

Having an understanding, cool dad. (That’s the worst.)

Rebelling against love. (Really, cause teenage girls never rebel against anything? Take a fucking pick.)

Secretary is just a cunt that makes coffee. (Oh, and for taking your anger out on.)

A woman who can parallel park is declaring war on the man’s ego.

Falling in love reduces a person to an object. (Wrapped in lies.)

Marriage is the worst. (It’s the woman’s own fault if she gets too old, too fat or too real.

Kids. Only thing worse than marriage. (Such baggage, man must have sons, but having them is just so… bothersome.)

Divorce. (Just one suitcase for a man. It’s the women who go all crazy.)

Infidelity. (Oh, yeah. Blame it on the post pubescent  hoofie. It gotsta be all her fault.)

To make an omelette, you have to break a few eggs… (What omelette?)

Loneliness.. (It’s not a boogeyman. Why do people hate being on their own? Is it because they’re so fucking boring? An alone man is okay but an alone woman is a crazy cat lady?)

Deathbed. (Yes. Fight for your daddy’s love over that of his wife’s. Who’s the cowardly bitch now?)

And how are death beds EVER anything but the worst thing one can ever witness? There’s a reason why integrity of patients is so protected – because one is never so ugly as when dying.

Lack of education. (Joe seems to think that she’s a lowlife, because she hasn’t read about many similar cases – because she never really read much, but let’s be honest here.. Literature is hardly a realistic portrayal of human condition.)

Bass. (The only way a guy, good but ugly, can get a pretty girl, is out of pity. Hm. Have you ever seen Peter Jackson during the Lotter filming era?)

“I can’t feel anything”. Well, yeah, idiot. Cause you’re looking with the body. Look bigger.

Orgasm. Divine. But blasphemous. Riiiiight.  It’s just a fucking orgasm.

You know libido waxes and wanes, right? It comes and goes. It’s hardly a matter or hysteria. (Pun intended.)

The one guy that actually listens to her (as oppose to pitying or fucking her), she constantly tries to put down.

A virgin man. (Well, actually, if a man’s a virgin, it’s not that he can’t relate to sexy stories, it’s probably quite the other way around. It’s all he ever thinks about and would fuck a lamp post.) Asexual man, on the other hand… That would be a what? A counterweight to a nymph? Arguably existent?

Sex is just sex. It really, really is. (There are SO many better things to do in life and in relationship that sex. Not INSTEAD of sex. Just, a lot better than sex. You CAN read a lot and have a healthy sex life. I promise. You can even be really well read AND still have a healthy sex life. Shit, you can be well read, healthily sexed and be married, even! Imagine that! But that must really make you a freak.)

Irresponsive cunt. (Uhm, maybe, if you tried shifting the center of your universe somewhere else for five minutes?)

Being unable to satisfy a woman. (If at first you don’t succeed, get the fuck out of here. A man cannot live with that burden hanging over his head. Leave the bitch. There are enough women who will respond to your efforts. Go. Who cares if she bears your kids.)

Caesarean. The ultimate male belief that once the cunt stretches to push out an infant, it never goes back to being fun. (Bad news, boys. The cunt is super flexible.)

Aaaaaa…. The old-as-time-music teacher fantasy… To all the little boys and their grown up sequels.

Yeah, that poor interpreter was completely useless. :D Great scene, though.

And of course the good old BBC fencing. (You’d have to be a porn buff to get that one.)

Hypocrisy. Yes, I got that one from the overall impression of your movie message, Von Trier. Good thing you’re not generalizing.

The ultimate male fantasy #2: beating women who keep coming back for more. Impotence much?

I was just wondering… How does a guy who beats women for full time… hobby, pay his bills?

Okay, this is as far as I’ve gotten. I really have better things to do now.

 

Only redeeming thing seems to be a good story. And killing the hypocrite.

Barbara of Cilli (not really)

Being deeply respectful of the Socratic method of late, and watching too much of The Good Wife, where people always support their arguments with endless knowledge of their subjects, I am starting to really miss the days when I was a lot smarter. Yesterday, while listening to a lady talk about a new book about another lady, although I did manage to suppress my need to ask question just to draw attention and provoke, I asked a few questions I actually wanted answered. (Dad helped me form one earlier that day.) Problem was, I didn’t really know much about this subject (anymore). I forgot oodles. My brain is no longer capable of holding information as it did, when I was younger.. Even if I tried to go to college now, it would be a waste of money, simply because I am unable to remember facts…

Then I realised, I have never been all that incredibly smart and never really new all that many facts – I just read a little bit on the subject and had the arrogance to take on any art historian that had the poor fortune to come my way.

So, nothing much broken there.

Now I feel a lot better. The book I bought was about a countess from these parts, a very picturesque and prominent character in history and who is not easy to write about, because there’s little actual record and ‘historians’ tend to make up ridiculous stories about female characters. The author for a change explained all this and admitted she used a lot of her own profession – clinical psychology – to compare rumours and ‘myths’ with what might be true now, based upon peripheral testimonies. I asked her, among other things, when she talked about national identity, if she thinks, if those famous people from our history didn’t all die out so suddenly and tragically as they did, if this country would every actually be a country: considering we had the uncanny need for serfdom and would never have any rulers of our own, only foreign. We agreed that there would probably be no Slovenia, if the Counts of Celje didn’t render themselves extinct. Slovenians were at the time considered redneck fist power, good only for making problems and bar brawls. Every ruler we ever had was from somewhere else.(Croats had no such problems. When Croatian royalty was needed, whoever had a famous tribal leader father was already pretty much a nobleman.)

Which also makes sense, because if you look at us now, when we finally got independent good twenty years ago, we managed to ruin pretty much everything that was good about this country and is only a matter of time before we start inviting foreign politicians or whatever syphilitic crowned head has ten minutes of time to please rule as some more. 

Other than that, the book is really bad ..
I don't think I've ever bought a bad book before.  O.o  Feels very wrong.