Sep 12, 2005 7:48 PM
… I watched Lost in Translation again last night and had a completely different experience with it (than the first time). it reminded me of… how (when you re-read a book, it comes out differently, and) it isn't the book that has changed, it’s you who has changed and can then have a completely different understanding of the book (or movie in this case). I actually think it is more complicated than just you changing, I think we all change like the tides depending on what we ate for lunch, whether or not someone was nice to us on the train, or we got an email from our sweetie this morning ;-). Is it possible that my moods vary more in one week than my personality has in my lifetime? (I don't think I believe that, but it's another way to think it.)
Sep 13, 2005 4:02 PM
… all good ideas have to come from some kind of collaboration. Maybe it is just easier to credit one human brain rather than an entire community. This might come back to my point from long ago about what makes a thing great is that it is finished. Maybe that's not limited to art. Maybe what makes a truly great creation of any kind is that it is finished, and the "great" people in any society are the ones who finish those things and therefore get credit.
* On the other hand, looking at Picasso's work last weekend (at the Musee Picasso), I felt like many weren't finished (it was mostly later stuff on display in the few rooms that were open due to the upcoming exhibition on his drawing). I felt annoyed, and that he was sloppy, esp considering his obvious genius.
* On the same hand, the thing about Michelangelo was that he didn't get along with anyone, couldn't collaborate with anyone, no one else's work was ever good enough for him (and often his own too). I think that's part of what made him a genius, deep-seeded competence in a sea of incompetents (or is that just impossibly high standards?).
* On the other hand, (the fact that) Raymond Chandler(‘s wife and editor wildly re-wrote his stories for publication) supports the original theory. Maybe he would have been nothing without his wife and editor.
I don't know how Einstein or Feynman worked, but it might be worth knowing. I bet they talked with their colleagues regularly about what they were thinking, doing, and making. But they probably did the work themselves (like Michelangelo and not like Chandler). But who’s to say that's better? Maybe the ability to collaborate well is one form of genius. It just doesn't always get recognition bc the human brain can't function that way. This is one reason that in college I studied art movements, altho I didn't know it at the time. Would Hemingway have been great without Gertrude Stein and Fitzgerald? Would Zora Neale Hurston have been great without Langston Hughes? Would Monet have been great without Manet and Cassatt?
And what exactly is feedback anyway? Can I get feedback from Lost in Translation? (I think so.) How do these random geniuses rise up without a movement? It seems to me that there always has to be influences. Who edits their books and paintings, corrects their experiments, tells them an idea is good or bad or so over? How does anyone know when they are doing something great?
…my point (about Lost in Translation) was that I don't think I can identify any more closely with that sense of isolation depicted so well now than I did when I saw the movie the first time. This is going to sound silly and so live-journal, but I think I have always felt isolated. I don't think I liked the movie the first time because it wasn't anything new to me -- just the awful way I have felt most of my life. I don't feel more isolated in Bangkok than I do in Berkeley. This viewing of the movie, I related more to the character development, and I really liked that it is such a quiet film.
…
I had trouble sleeping last night despite not having had a nap or anything. Class was good today as usual. I pretended to sell this kinda annoying Israeli girl a car, but I made her pay a 1000 euro deposit and wait for 3 months while we built the car for her. She wears heavy bleu eyeshadow up to her eyebrow, has her jet-black hair streaked blond, and has absolutely no understanding of French grammar. But don't get me wrong, she's OK.
I've eaten 4 pastries today. I walked for a little bit after class and no one tried to talk to me. I think I'll try a short nap now despite having loads of stuff to do....
Sep 14, 2005 6:04 PM
I guess what I was trying to do was pull at the string of the lives of various specific artists, and look at how their specific communities contributed to their work. It's interesting that right now I am reading about Michelangelo bc, as his life and work are portrayed in this book, he was no collaborator. However, there's more to it than whether or not you let some other guy build the road (at the very least) to the new marble quarry which you have built to harvest marble for your sculptures (he didn't -- I kid you not -- he took individual creation to that much of an extreme). But he was heavily influenced by competition with da Vinci and Rafael. His jealousy of their success influenced him to do new things, a specific example being the Sistine Chapel ceiling (he started painting specifically to prove that he was a better artist than da Vinci, who mainly painted, of course).
It also ties in with the conversation about re-reading books. We are each the collection of our experiences and all that, whether it's the proverbial butterfly flapping its wings or a direct collaboration between individuals.... I was upset that I didn't get that job (years ago) with MTC but like in Dar Williams's song "Blessings", where she talks about how glad she is now that she had these painful breakups then, everything might just work out. Rafael is a great and famous painter, and I studied him in Art 100 I took at Smith College (a good place to study art history), but I don't think he's as famous as Michelangelo. Of course, da Vinci is another story all together. And yet, I just image-googled Michelangelo and the Sistine Chapel came up more than any of his other works (the David is pretty famous too, but I was most impressed by the Pieta, myself. it really made an impression on me. Oh, I googled him bc I wanted to see the Leda and the Swan painting -- I didn't remember it. – it turns out this is bc it was lost almost immediately.) I guess I can imagine a world where Michelangelo wasn't driven by a mad jealousy of da Vinci to paint that ceiling (indirectly), but I don't think it would be the one we live in now.
All these names of artists -- they're just names to help us find and identify things, like you and your software capabilities -- tools to help us retrieve images or ideas. War and Peace is my favorite book bc Tolstoy's thesis he attempts to prove in those 1,424 pages of fiction is that nothing happens at the impetus of one single individual, but rather as a result of collective consciousness. Specifically, Napoleon didn't singlehandedly decide to take over the world -- the French people believed (and probably still do, with some reason) that they should run the world. Napoleon gave voice to that belief and began its movement (as told in War and Peace and in history).
I once made that same argument in a paper in grad school -- that the design of Market Street exemplified the city planning en-vogue method of each era. Unfortunately, the prof I wrote it for led the redesign post-BART/Muni underground, and he didn't like my thesis much. But the grade didn't matter much -- the point is that that is what I found, and realized (!) after talking about it with my friends (who hadn't even read Tolstoy) and colleagues. I guess that brings me full circle; so, I should try to talk about something else now.
I continue to have trouble sleeping. Class has been fine, but is more difficult when I am tired. I am getting pretty good about rambling on in French about CA politics or Choucrute Garnie. I know I still make loads of errors, but it's good practice. I made a list of things I have to do before I leave on Friday and how long each thing will take me, and it's about 10 hours of work. Not sure if I'll find time, but it's good to have goals.
Sep 15, 2005 7:41 PM
I agree that individuals and movements combine to create genius, but I also think that it also takes the initiative of those individuals. That's part of the "everyone is a genius" theory (which has more to do with medium than environment), bc when people are able to dedicate themselves to something over a period of time, they usually succeed. A good example from my life is my writing “career”. Before I left for my trip around the world (1994), I did a little freelance work. When I got back, all sorts of people called me to do this and that, but by then I didn't want to be a writer anymore. I was starting to want to be a planner. (I figured out that writing isn't very interesting if you don't know anything.) So, it surprised me that altho I was completely out of communication for 1 year, my career continued to advance. And of course, my planning career has been much the same, altho I have never been out of communication with planners bc of the internet.
The book indicates that Michelangelo worked much much harder than I ever intend to. And I think that discipline paid off for him. (Although he was also born with a great talent to draw anything and raised cutting stone.) This gets back to the "love, work, and friends, you can have 2 but never 3" issue that I think we've talked about. Altho it appears to me that Michelangelo only really had work with any consistency.
So, I would expand the statement that individuals and environment and environment conspire to create genius to also include medium and discipline -- which is kind of a subset of the other 2. I would display is visually as a square divided into 4 by one vertical and one horizontal line and arrows representing the flow between them. In this case environment becomes both large and small (who are your parents? Is the global political environment such that there is money available to pay you to make marble sculptures? etc. with your peer group resting in the middle, encouraging you and inspiring your jealousy). No wait, I think it is better as a triangle... Anyway, I just got tired of talking about this. (which doesn't mean you shouldn't add something if you want to.)
…Most "interesting" things are really very simple when you get down to actually doing them.
The best example I can think of right now is relationships. They're complicated and strange, and I don't understand them at all. But when you examine people in long-term happy relationships, it is really very simple. The Israeli girl in class had a problem with her boyfriend 2 days ago, and we got into a conversation about what makes relationships work. I tried to explain (in French, of course) about the relationships researcher at UW Seattle who did extensive research on marriages that last and found, to his surprise, that the single factor was that the men all said "yes, dear". Of course, the American and Canadian women in the class agreed. But the teacher didn't understand, probably due to the French culture more than my language skills. He dismissed me as a Feminist (which is a bad thing to be in France).
My point is that nearly everything can be seen as incredibly simple or incredibly complicated, depending on your prospective.
We continue to practice the future simple tense and possessive pronouns. We played Taboo again today, except this time it was the 4 best speakers (IMHO) against the 5 worst. We won 5-1. (Both times the Israeli girl was up, she said a taboo word in her first sentence.)
Jennifer and I had lunch, which was not great (the food, I mean, not the company). We talked about how tired we are and how we can't sleep and sleeping pills and a bunch of other stuff. Yeah, I still can't sleep. This English woman suggested it could be the changing weather.
Sep 16, 2005 11:20 AM
Didn't finish Michelangelo -- reading makes me fall right asleep these days. I agree with you about stories (that they bring and hold people together). Is that why I travel so much? (to collect stories?)
I told you the Israel girl was having trouble with her bf? Well, today she announced they're engaged. I wish them luck.
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