Confession

July 27, 2008

The only time I have had a "spiritual" experience was when, about 20 years ago (or perhaps 15, I prefer to exaggerate) I found out that I was gay. Or rather that I was making myself gay.

The experience was in retrospect 'spiritual'. It certainly was not carnal: there was no sex act involved. It was certainly insane, crazy, out of this world. I 'lost my marbles'. At the time I said that sort of thing to myself; ' You have lost your marbles Tim'. But at the same time, like many people who are deemed 'insane' it seemed to me truer than the existance that I was supposed to live then, and indeed the one that I live now.

I was about 21 and entering society for the first time, working for a weapons manufacturer in the UK. I did not like my job. I read Nietzsche and Camus and wondered about 'the meaning of life.' I wrote a diary about my musings on the meaning of life and, generally, how meaningless life seemed to me.

And then one day when I was reading through my diary, it was as if the narrator caught up with him or herself (like "the drums in the deep" in scene in Balin's tomb of the "Lord of the Rings", or the end of "One Hundred Years of Solitude" By Gabriel Garcia Marquez).

And I had an experience where, it seemed to me, that the person that I always thought I am, indeed the person that I think I am now, was (is) but *a pupet made of words*. I found myself to be a ventriloquist that is identifying with his "dummy" (like "Magic" by William Goldman). I was (am) that "dummy" or puppet.

It seemed to me in a flash, that the person that I normally think is me, is nothing more than the hero of a novel. The heros of novels do not exist. I think that I exist. But all the while I am only the presumed subject of a narrative that 'I' speak 'to myself.'

But *not* to myself. Normally, when I say "What the heck are you doing posting this to your blog?" I think that I am talking to the same person that I think is doing the speaking - myself.

I am under the illusion not only that the enunciator is the enunciated (I am the one who speaks,
rather than something else is speak of me), but also that the listener is the same as as the
speaker (enuciator) and spoken of (enunciated).

In that flash I realised that I was "talking off", that is to say that I was talking deliberately to be
overheard. Any what a thing I was overheard by...I was in the presence of something far bigger than little puppet me, a giant, a vast, true-me of immesurable proportions. That true me was (is!) male. But I was speaking "off" to it, itself, *as if it were a woman*. Particularly as if it were my own 'pet mother'.

When a child is lonely what does it do? Children often play with dolls or teddy bears. They cuddle their teddy bear, their doll. That is a strange behaviour in a sense because they are not asking teddy to cuddle them. One never or rarely sees a child trying to get the doll or teddy bear to hold it, the child, in its arms.Instead they hold the bear. They hug the bear to their chest and comfort it, even though it is they, the comforter that needs to be comforted. It is strange, in a sense, that there is not much of a demand for giant teddy bears. (Sort of "dutch mothers"?)

It seemed to me that I am a lonely child that has made a teddy bear, that is myself. I cuddle it. Or rather it myself I speak, and speaks, and demands to be cuddled. In that empty space of my consciousness a puppet or teddy bear made of words, creates itself or is created, so that it can be comforted. And creates a or permiates an atmosphere of a mother to comfort it. And all the while a faceless giant looks and listens on.

The realisation was sparked off by the realisation of my homosexuality. The puppet made of words insisted upon speaking 'off' to someone that would love it unconditionally, like a mother. I realised in that flash that I was making my giant, true-self into a woman. I was speaking 'off' to my true self as if that true self were a woman. In that realisation, I realised the game I was playing. I realised that I was making a woman of my giant self.

That this was why I was (am) homosexual. It was also the end of my homosexuality.

I realised that my giant self wanted a sort of obliteration. It wanted to end the charade.It wanted to stop having to listen to these moans and wimperings of a perpetual mummys boy and be, to put it politely, 'made love to.'

I am not sure if women want that. I am not sure if there is a "little death" (petit mort) for men or women at all. But that is what I felt I　wanted.

There is a tripartite relationship.

A giant man in drag holding a puppet made of words.
The woman that giant man is (by being in drag) pretending to be
The person that I am, the puppet, that thinks he speaks, and by speaking in a whining, way creates the woman, the veneer of "drag" (make up?! a wig?) on the giant.

All there "really" is, is the 'giant man-in-drag-holding-a-puppet-made-of-words'. But in my day to day life I am the puppet. I wonder if I still speak in such a way as to make the giant listen with a mother' ear, and make the giant wear womens clothes. I don't know.

I don't do homosexuality but, the experience, it was as true to me as the screen I see. It was truer than me as I still am.

Ahmen

Dreams Stranger than Fiction

January 03, 2008

"Stranger than Fiction" (2006) is an okay film. At one level it is a love story about a nerdy tax inspector and a coffee shop owner. The tax inspector that lives for numbers and punctuality, that lives his life in a fastidious, perfectionist, a-sensual fashion wakes up to the world of cakes and kisses and he dives, into the sensual world. In this movement he is aided by the was-once-a-bit-of-a-nerd, coffee shop owner that dived herself, many years before, out of law school in the sensual-world-more-important.

At this level "Stranger than fiction" has the hallmarks of many a love story, where the impediment to love lies in the character of one or more of the protagonists. Love stories with nerdy heroes and heroines are not few in number. I enjoyed "A New Leaf"(1971) starring botanist-nerd Elaine May, and cynic Walter Matthau, athough this film tracked the movement towards love of a cynic rather than a nerd. There are perhaps even more love stories about cynics meeting their match and taking the plunge, such as "When Harry met Sally"(1989) and "Wedding Crashers"(2005). Cynics and nerds have this in common: they both don't know how to do that loving stuff. Other love stories feature a Briton, who in Hollywood are all both cynical and nerdy, such as "Four Weddings and a Funeral" and "Nottinghill," which feature Hugh Grant becoming aware of his mojo. Upping the brow-level perhaps there are love stories about idealists taking the plunge, such as "Wings of Desire (Himmel Uber Berlin)", its naff remake "City of Angels," and "The Legend of Nineteen Hundred," although in the latter case the idealist sticks with ideals rather than love.

At the same time however, "Stranger than Fiction" crosses genres, and adds a irreal, crazy, almost Matrixical alterity; the hero of "Stranger than Fiction" finds that he is the hero of a woman's novel. We see the (female) novelist fretting over ways to kill him off.

The hero eventually tracks down and meets the novelist but reading her book, he decides to run with the story, and in front of a bus to his nemisis, at which point the novelist decides to make the accident, no longer accidental, non-fatal. At this point, in her words, the love story takes that sensual realistic dive into the world of the little things. The taste of coffee and lipstick, the brush of someones eyelashes accross your cheek. Rather than the grand design, rather than the objectives, and conclusions of works of great fiction, the hero and his novelist choose the everyday.

Dead interesing. But what of dreams?

At the same time I was watching a program on Japanese television about a lady that gave up the everyday to pursue her dreams. At 50 or thereabouts she says that we all have dreams but usually we give up on them and opt for life. She describes dreams (by that she means goals) as a bomb that we carry with us, and that most people, caught up with the everyday allow it not to explode.

At the same time again I found myself watching the concluding song to "Joseph and the Technicolour Dreamcoat" wherein we are told, "Any Dream Will Do." This recently the title of a reality TV series to find the next incarnation of Joseph on stage.

All very confusing. Is love a dream? Or does it present us with the real world? Is choosing love a cop-out or a higher ideal?

A recent survey by a student I know found that there is a strong correlation between honesty and romanticism. An unexpected result?

Types of Exchange

January 30, 2007

There are many types of exchange, and in particular there are several ways in which an exchange between people, for goods or services may appear fair. I thought it would be instructive to think about a few of them.

Idiosyncratic
When person X thinks that the goods or services provided by person Y are wonderful then irrespective of all other factors, the sky is the limit for the the price that person y may demand for such goods or services. For example if I am absolutely crazy about the way that you sing, then I may pay a lot of money to you to sing and this may be considered fair by all parties.

Equality of Time and or Labour
Labour is difficult to quantify but nonetheless people may feel that a deal is fair when both parties but a similar amount of time or labour into the product or service that they are swapping. In a village one farmer may dig ditches for another in exchange for help harvesting wheat. Things become more complicated when swapping ditch digging for brain surgery. The ditch digger may hope to repay one day of service from a brain surgeon's help with one day of ditch digging, but the latter may point out the time spent training to be a brain surgeon should be added to the mix. All the same, an equality of time or labour is the ideal upheld by some communal systems, such as communism which proclaims, "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need" and or perhaps my school whose motto was "work of each for the weal of all."

Utility
People tend to consider a deal to be fair when the things that are exchanged have approximately the same utility. Utility is also difficult to define. Again Marx had a lot to say about utility, particularly, that humans soon forget about it and make a fetish out of things that started off having practical utility, such as money; money is useful but not as useful as it is worshipped to be. Elsewhere Jean Baudrillard claimed that there is no such thing as utility, and that everything is sort of fetishised, so that even wholemeal loaves of bread, or purposefully simple and would be utilitarian pieces of (Swedish) furniture have become status simbols. Even so, one criteria by which we consider a deal to be fair is when the utility of the goods or services exchanged is approximately equal. Utility calls upon a economists stone, or a human nature, which inherently and universally values life more than soda pop. For example when caucasians went to North America with mirrors and other 'trinkets' and persuaded North Americans to sign away tracks of land in exchange, there is a part of us that says that the deal was not fair. The trinkets were useless (only of idiosyncratic value) whereas the tracts of land were utile.

Economic
When goods or services are part of an economy then their value depends upon supply and demand. If a plane load of people crash in a desert then the person that has 50 bottles of Perrier in their luggage can swap them for the diamond rings of the other passengers, even though the diamond rings may have required a great deal more labour to purchase. Sometimes people tend to feel that exchange based upon supply and demand are a little unfair in some way despite the fact that normal exchange is dominated by fairness of this type. For example I used to attempt to set up exchange programs between Japanese and British universities. This endeavour was hampered by the fact that the British universities were prepared to offer far less in terms of time/labour or utility, because they were in a 'sellers market' and the demand for their service (many Japanese university students want study in Britain) is far greater than the demand for the service provided by universities in Japan (few British students want to study in Japan).

Love
Perhaps this is the end of exchange. This is also an extension of idiosyncratic exchange in that the fairness percieved by those that are 'exchanging' may not be accountable by any objective standard. When a parent runs toward danger (I am thinking of a mother running towards an oncoming tidal wave and her children), or when a man or woman 'lays down his life for his friends' then there is and there is not an exchange going on. Why do people do it? What reward is recieved in such acts of self sacrifice? I guess that some might point to a percieved reward in Heaven or other religious reward, but for the most part it seems that the notion of "exchange," is rendered inapplicable by the existance of an identification such that the 'giver' feels that they are giving to themselves.

Waking Life

January 24, 2007

Waking Life gets good reviews from "the nation's critics" at rottentomatoes.com. I confess that I fell asleep in the middle.

The film is a sort of animated sequence of interviews. Animated in the sense that the interviews which were shot with a video camera have been overpainted so that they have become the filmic equivalent of overpainted photographs. And animated in the sense that the interviews consist of someone waxing philosophical to a young, decidedly inanimate guy with a floppy centre parting.

Most of the philosophy I had heard before. These days it seems to me that the whole of Western philosophy boils down to the liars paradox. For instance Satre, as explained in an early part of the film, seems to be saying that one can not denate ones responsibility or choice because to do so would be to make a choice and thus be cretan.

However, Nathan Hawke, in a rare bed scence propounded the one theory that fired my imagination. Nathan and his girlfriend are in bed and at least one of them has been dreaming. They note how little time it takes, in waking life seconds, to dream a dream that can seem to have lasted for days. One can wake up, look at ones alarm clock, fall back asleep and to experience a dream of epic proportions, only to wake up to find that merely a few seconds have passed. They also claim that brain activity continues for between 6 and 12 minutes after - one presumes resperatory - death. They then surmise that in this time a dead man or woman would have the ability to dream, or relive all their waking life. And furthermore, the surmise, that perhaps waking life is indeed the dream that they are having on their death bed.

This theme has occured before as noted in reviews (I think I have written reviews) of Sixth Sense, Others (a sort of Sixth Sense for women) and American Beauty. These latter films suggest that the dead do go on to experience life, either believing that they are still alive (the first two) or aware that they are dead and free to ponder over their life as a whole. Waking life goes a little further to suggest that this life that we are experiencing is that dream we experience falling down through the clouds to dwell with worms and clay.

Jacques Lacan once claimed that the ego is dead. But I think that he was referring to the fact that it is a construction, a dead thing, an artifice, an sort of prosthesis to use Macluhans phrasiology.

So are we really dead already?

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Sin City

July 02, 2006

Sin City is an interesting film. I am not particularly keen on violence but I am a long time fan of Mickey Rourke and I have an interest in hard boiled, film-noir. Another thing that appeals to my structuralist mind is that is that Sin-City is in three or four parts and these parts repeat, share a commonality of structure and device.

One of the minority of damning reviews of Sin City - damning of the gratuitous violence - points to one common theme: "See a pattern? Women in this movie are all whores and strippers..."

That is not the only common theme. The most interesting one for me is that all the men in the movie are talking to themselves. The three lead charters Hartigan (Bruce Willis), Dwight (Clive Owen) and Marv (Mickey Rourke) in true hard boiled film noir style spend the whole film nurdling on to themselves cynically, explaining what is going on, and making up for the lack of light.

Who are they speaking to? They are speaking to themselves and the audience and perhaps also to the woman that they love. The women that all these men willingly sacrifice themselves for (two dying in the process) are not only prostitutes, they are (1) the targets of an enduring and powerful love that tears the heroes to pieces (2) unobtainable in one way or another (dead, too young, past tense), (3) the reason why the heroes die (4) generally silent but often imagined and in one case an avid letter writer, (5) violent, sexually preditorial, hermaphrodite (6) and as we have seen, perhaps the superaddressee of the film noir narration.

Why do heroes mumble themselves into oblivion for a whore-goddess of love? Why is it that, and this is what makes it so tragi-dense, the heroes half know they will never get the the whore-goddess get?

Recently I have been born of a son, born on the 30th May 2006. He is called Ray Takemoto. He cries quite a lot, a plaintiff warbling cry that cannot be predicted and seems at times to know no satisfaction. Sometimes the solution is simple: Ray needs his nappy (diaper) changed or more often some of his mother's milk. Often at the same time the reason seems to be general malaise or dissatisfaction with the fact of being born to a world where he has desire but almost no power to achieve their ends. He must have quite a frustrating time. We all must have quite a frustrating time, since we are born "foetalised," weirdly incapable of even the ability to stand. Our only defense, is our lovability and the volume and mesmeric persistence of our cries. Here in Japan they say that "crying is a babies occupation".

To cut a long story short, looking at baby Ray I see Hartigan, Dwight, Marv and myself. The wail has become less of a whimper now and has taken on the pretension of gravelly, 'hard-boiled,' machismo. But it is still a long drawn out moan about how tough things are. Most importantly it seems that perhaps in all cases the hard boiled whimper is a whimper of love. But only Ray - thank you Ray - has anyone listening.

Are our heroes doomed to sacrifice themselves selves speaking to the him-her fantasy forever? It is not so bad, since there is beauty in it. Sin City was, from a certain angle, a beautiful movie. Self-sacrificing, self-narrating men, such as Fabrizio Quattrocchi(a baker from Sicily who wanted to save up to buy a house for his family but ends up narrating his own death) are indeed heroes.

But who are all these violent, whoring, silent, hermaphrodite goddesses that the sniveling super-hunks of Sin City die for? I suggest, I guess, that these women are the protagonists themselves.