My White Whale… Document Document Document!
Madrid is the greatest major city in Europe. I’ve only had fine memories of that city and perhaps it is because my young mind was bathed in swirls of rampant sexuality, a rock opera, pizza with orange sauce (I think it was a vodka sauce), carefully managing my money to make it to the end of the vacation, but most importantly, it was where my white whale lives. As an Italian-American, who has family in Italy, I often go back to the motherland to see my cousins and they come here to visit; however my experiences in my family’s mountain village never prepared me for a modern European city. Luckily, and being blessed/privileged enough to have the opportunity, I was able to go on a High school Trip to Europe (Paris, Madrid, and a few other towns).
To be honest, I am not even sure what memories are associated with each city/town/village. It was a rigamarole where a teacher learned he could go to Europe for free with his family if they chaperoned an educational voyage. So, in between eating good food, viewing architecture (Notre Dame has some fucked up sculptures above the doors – but you can get a crepe at the corner of every block), and spending time in museums (don’t see the Mona Lisa, it is depressingly anti-climatic), I was unable to really wander. We had an itinerary that we needed to stick to for our education. I was more aloof back then and was just enjoying my life.
So when I was in a discotheque and teenagers my age were dancing in steel cages (what the fuck Madrid), I was confused… add in the dudes who were 50 watching them and you get a strange twang of gross. Where were their parents? Why were so many kids making out along the walls? Who seriously let in these old fucks? Is this a fever dream? Why is this soda* so expensive? (Oh young Theodore, if only you knew that the price of beer would make that soda look cheap).
But I digress. And this post isn’t about Madrid and the weirdness I experienced there (like that Queen Rock opera I watched when I didn’t speak Spanish… We Will Rock You is amazing – see it if you can, especially with Spaniards singing the English parts). No… this blog post is about The White Whale… not fucking Moby Dick (I have officially met two people who have read that entire book – Hi Angelica and Jason) but specifically my White Whale which is a painting I saw in a museum in Madrid.
Now, I am a person who believes that art should speak to you on a fundamental level. No matter what it is, when you look at it, you should be reduced and unable to comprehend why the painting is making you feel things. You should just have an emotional response. It should lodge itself in your mind and never relinquish its place to another memory. No, a true painting is not something that can’t be deduced by art history or technique. A true painting is something you see and can never forget.
Which is why a painting in Madrid is my White Whale. I’ve forgotten everything around that painting. All I know is that the painting is a double perspective with the Last Supper on one end and an arch on another (which arch? only god knows or an art historian or an architect). Wait, let’s rewind, a double perspective (if I am saying that right) means on Side A of the painting the focus is Object A but on Side B the focus is Object B; therefore, as you walk from Side A to Side B, Object A should shrink and become secondary to Object B. Which means, you can twist what matters to the viewer by simply having them walk to the other side of the painting. According to our tour guide, the painting was placed against a wall by the painter so the patron wouldn’t notice that the arch was the true focus of the piece.
Thus, the painting was subversive. Instead of just painting the Last Supper, the artist went painstakingly out of their way to paint a double perspective that shifted to highlight an arch instead of the supper. I will avoid the philosophical implications of an artist correlating Jesus to a piece of architecture because that is its own nugget to unpack.
So I am rambling, and I guess the outcome of my post is simple: take notes. If something impacts you, don’t assume you will remember it, you won’t. I don’t even know if this painting was in Madrid or Paris. All I know is it was on that trip in Sophomore year. It isn’t some famous painter that you can search for on the internet (I’ve tried) or a painting that everyone knows… no this painting was a magical thing from my teenage years. Everything that happened on that trip is inconsequential when I think of that painting. So go out there and look at art, you never know when it will grab you and make you its servant.
One final note: the most recent piece to slap me upside the head was an intense piece of graffiti, and luckily, I had my notebook and took notes that later turned into the inspiration for a painting in Bohr’s Bathos. You never know when inspiration or art will grab you… so be prepared.
~Theodore
*I’ll never use a brand name on this website. Go drink some tea… soda is poison.
I am Back – End of the Year Update
So this blog post was originally slated to come out on December 23rd, 2017, but I was involved in an accident where a person ran a red light and t-boned my car. As such, I haven’t had time to focus on writing up a blog for the end of the year. Finally, the insanity of scrambling to solve my automotive issues stabilized with an eleven hour work day today. So, as I sit here listening to Norah Jones, I am wondering if I should wax philosophical about life and how quickly you can be snuffed out, but I won’t do that. Instead, I will focus on what this post was supposed to be about: the end of my year. I will probably discuss the accident later, but for now, just make sure you have side impact airbags and wear your seat belt the second you get into your car.
Now, let’s get into 2017 for me. Specifically, it was a rough year with a lot of focus on polishing old pieces, reading, short stories, fighting for the oxford comma, and not having time for life. In terms of writing here are some things I did this year:
- Finished Bohr’s Bathos (maybe last year | 2016)
- Polished Bohr’s Bathos (four major revisions)
- Wrote the novella: Gaia’s Revenge
- Cranked out a crap ton of short stories (see the post on my output for dates and times: State of my Writing 2017)
- Got my blog post output up there (over four per a month)
- Increased my Haiku writing
- Started Manuscript 8 (Nasty little nugget – research began at the beginning of the year and is still ongoing with 12,000+ words being written).
- Began a project called Project Grim
- Wrote a screen play with two other writers
- Further defined a two year old podcast and narrowed down what I think it will become
- And probably some other stuff I am forgetting
But what has been important is clearing the fog from my mind. On December 23rd, 2017, I was super excited to have a blog post go out and mention that I hadn’t had a cigarette in two months. While I still haven’t had a cigarette since September 23rd, 2017, I really wanted it to be on that date. Yet, I survived an accident and still didn’t smoke. I dropped booze from my life simultaneously (a beer here or there, but living that clean life yo). And basically straightened out everything that has been a distraction from my writing. Even eating healthy regularly has replaced the five dollar specials from my local bar. Then I began working out regularly and my body is now falling into line with my mind. All of this happened well before my accident, so it wasn’t some “see the white light and fix your life” moment for me. I am just glad I didn’t slip back into old habits due to that event.
Now, I just need to get back to the basics of writing everyday. My goal is to have a schedule that follows:
- Write
- Read
- Edit
- Workout
- Study Italian
- Cook
- Clean dishes
- Spend time with friends and family
- Veg out
Here is to 2018! Fuck resolutions, I plan to keep crushing it and cranking away at this writing thing. Wear your damn seat belt and remember it’s those that you leave behind that suffer.
~Theodore
Be Dynamic and Change
To say I’m a structured individual is honest but would also be a potential misunderstanding. Yes, if it’s a Monday, I can tell you exactly where I will be at 6:45 PM. Same thing for every other work day. On the weekends, it is more of a crap shoot, but in general, I live a structured life. Now, I do this for a clear and concise reason; I’ve got too much shit on my plate and I gotta gobble it all down. In order to be a successful writer, I believe I should be working roughly forty hours a week on some sort of writing activity. When you calculate the amount of time available in a week, you quickly learn that two full time jobs is extremely difficult to manage (throw in the fact that my occupation requires me to work about fifty hours a week, and the timeline gets tighter).
For example, if we assume 7 hours of sleep a night, with an hour to get ready and fall asleep, you have a 16 hour day. Now, rip out 8 hours for work, tear off 20-40 minutes for the commute (round up to an hour for easy math), don’t forget cooking time, work out time, or cleaning the apartment/dishes, and now remove 40 hours for your other fulltime job, carry the one, and you end up with 8 hours of time to do something else. In order to justify reading in my schedule, I count it against my 40 hours a week of writing (I am researching the competition?). So, maintaining a highly structured life is a necessity.
Now, it is important to understand that I structure my world but I don’t let the structure dictate my life. I allow social obligations to override my plan.
I wrote the following three paragraphs months ago. Since then, I’ve changed my ritual again – I do less journaling but I’ve maximized my time for fiction writing (who cares about their own life anyway) and re-added morning reading to my schedule (part of my previous previous morning ritual). So if you want to know my old schedule, take a gander below.
I have an expensive morning ritual. I wake up, drink a water, shower, take my lunch and laptop down to the car, and then stop on my way into work and have an espresso. Now, I have a few things I do without caring about the ramifications – this is one of them. It is costly since I do it every day, but I do it because it grounds myself. It forces me to get out of bed when I don’t want to. I’ve used it to trick myself into thinking I have to be at a meeting (but really I am grabbing an espresso, journaling, and then driving to work).
Personally, I find it weird that our society treats coffee like a necessity. I believe if you are spending the money to drink an expensive coffee, you should sit your ass down and enjoy it at the café. Have a conversation with the baristas, see how their day is going (and truly give a shit), and then maybe read a short article/journal. Ever since I started this ritual, I began to slide out of my slump, I began working out again, and wrote a shit load of short stories while editing my old manuscripts with a new vigor.
As such, enjoy your rituals and use them to maintain your drive. Mine is actually cheap compared to other people’s habits. The only issue, watch out for feelings. Interacting with someone weekly and bonding with them on a personal level could compromise the safe place you’ve built – but I am not talking from experience or anything because my pigheadness will never let me stop writing even if the person I like is standing a foot from me as I write this post.
The Twelve Brothers
“And now a great fire was lighted in the courtyard in which she was to be burnt, and the King stood above at the window and looked on with tearful eyes, because he still loved her so much. And when she was bound fast so the stake, and the fire was licking at her clothes with its red tongue, the last instant of the seven years expired. Then a whirring sound was heard in the air, and twelve ravens came flying towards the place, and sank downwards, and when they touched the earth they were her twelve brothers, whom she had saved. They tore the fire asunder, extinguished the flames, set their dear sister free, and kissed and embraced her. And now as she dared to open her mouth and speak, she told the King why she had been dumb, and had never laughed. The King rejoiced when he heard that she was innocent, and they all lived in great unity until their death. The wicked stepmother was taken before the judge, and put into a barrel filled with boiling, oil and venomous snakes, and died an evil death.
~Brothers Grimm
I’ve noticed an ongoing theme and I believe it will continue throughout many of these fables – blood is thicker than water. Those who are family by blood are trustworthy. Perhaps, the trope with the stepmother being a villain began at this point, maybe, it was forged into our societies collective consciousness by this single short story. For, this entire short story you see the brothers and their sister work together to survive and make sacrifices for one another – their love is pure and based on an invisible bond (even the quote above calls this out: “The King rejoiced when he heard that she was innocent.” because she could have talked at any point and saved herself by dooming her brothers). Even though the king married her out of love decided to kill her at the stepmother’s behest (not sure if the stepmother is the king’s mom or not, but if she is, then the king chose blood over love). In the end, she gets her comeuppance (see the last line of the quote above). But, while this over arching theme/moral is great, I need to analyze it from a hero/villain moral standpoint. [Click “Read More” to see the more detailed analysis]
It’s All Natural – Arsenic
If you have stuck around this long, you obviously know my feelings towards business and marketing terms. So, if you are surprised here – that’s on you. There are laws in place to protect a consumer from being taken advantage by false advertising. But there are various ways to avoid breeching those laws… like creating a product called: “REAL CHEESE!”. Now if you are super sneaky, you can call the new product (created from pure chemicals and formulated in a lab) “NATURAL REAL CHEESE!”. As a product, and having it trademarked, you can do whatever you want with the term. Derived from soy beans and decomposing plant farts, doesn’t matter, the product is still “NATURAL REAL CHEESE!” and it can be sold as vegan! Imagine that, a cheese product that is vegan. Then there is the vegetarian option: “NATURAL REAL CHEESE!!” that is made from human farts, soy beans, and goat urine – yummmmmy!
My point is quite simple, though I meandered from my original topic, and that is anything can be called natural. In the above case, I can use law to generate an appealing product by naming it one thing even if it is creating from human shit. By creating a legal name for the product, I force you to only look at the surface level and see: real cheese. Not only that, I throw in natural to make you think that it was derived from a natural process like fermentation. This isn’t the case, the process is manufacturing, but the ingredients are natural.
However, the clear issue is the concept of natural. Everything is natural. But I can promise you would have certain feelings to the difference between a strawberry from the side of a mountain versus one grown in a test tube – yet both are natural (since atoms/elements/quarks are all natural).
Hard Determinism and Ethics
Apparently, I decided to write a single philosophical piece about a meme (The Stars and Planets Will Affect Your Life in Some Way) and it snowballed into a bunch of smaller pieces to explain certain pieces that I discussed in the aforementioned piece. For example, I discuss how planets will affect your life in many ways based on quantum mechanics. Before I get into the ethical issues for hard determinism, I figured we should go through a primer on quantum mechanics and how you have zero free will but perceive that you have free will. This is the same type of argument one would discuss if someone believed God was all knowing, all powerful, and all moral; God knows everything so nothing you do is a surprise to God, so you don’t have freewill, it is all pre-determined, but you don’t know that so you don’t realize you lack free will and instead perceive that you are free. (I got wordy, so I added a [Read More] link so you can choose to continue reading or not)
The Wonderful Musician
“Oh, musician,” replied the little hare, “I will obey you as a scholar obeys his master.” They went a part of the way together until they came to an open space in the forest, where stood an aspen tree. The musician tied a long string round the little hare’s neck, the other end of which he fastened to the tree.
“Now briskly, little hare, run twenty times around the tree!” cried the musician, and the little hare obeyed, and when it had run around twenty times, it had twisted the string twenty times around the trunk of the tree, and the little hare was caught, and let it pull and tug as it liked, it only made the string cut into its tender neck. “Wait there till I come back, ” said the musician and went onwards.
~Brothers Grimm
Fuck the musician. This piece of shit is a total asshole who took advantage of the woodland creatures because of his laziness. Listen to this shit: “‘Why, a hare is coming,’ said the musician, ‘I do not want him.'” Three animals appeared and wanted help (wolf, fox, and finally, the hare) learning the fiddle. Something the musician wanted to teach, but him being a bigoted asshole, he only wanted to teach humans. Now, I know I am reading this shit from the perspective of our current time, but I can only imagine that the original moral here was: don’t play with wild creatures, you have no idea what they want (since wolves and foxes probably killed kids often). But reading it now, I have gotten a whole new moral analysis. [Click “Read More” for my modern take]
The Stars and Planets Will Affect Your Life in Some Way
While strolling through the world wide web, I came across one of these meme thingamobobs where it listed all the zodiac signs and then their horoscope. For each zodiac, it stated: “The Stars and Planets Will not Affect Your Life in Any Way”. Now, the question you are probably asking is if Theodore is a believer. Some of you no doubt believe in horoscopes and some of you hate them and consider them a plague upon the rational enlightened mind of the homo homo sapien. Or perhaps it is something different, like that person I met who believed pink quartz had healing capabilities and was fixing their ailment; this thought had spread from their significant other. If you have to ask where I land on this topic, I highly suggest you review my marinade recipe rant: Marinade or Cancer Cure. However, I am not on the side of this meme because they failed linguistically. Blatantly put: they are wrong and their meme is a lie. You want to know how I can say that so confidently? Click [Read More] and I will take you through a philosophical journey.
The Man in the High Castle – Not the Book by PKD
I recently heard about a man who has locked himself in a castle (large mansion that is nicknamed the castle). He doesn’t have visitors often and is mostly there to maintain the place and enforce the rules. It is an isolation job where he doesn’t see anyone for many days throughout the week. When he does have an interaction with someone, it is usually brief and him discussing what he does.
Now, I know that I am an extrovert and introvert blend, and because of that, I need to see humans on a regular basis. I need to see the way they tick and move. All these observations go into creating mannerisms for characters, speech patterns, and all of that fun jazz that makes a character three dimensional/realistic. Obviously, I make some stuff up, but I often listen to the world around me and pull from there. This blog post is developed from this approach and a conversation with a neighbor.
So, the man in the castle confused me. His goal is to write a screen play for a movie. That’s why he took the job in the mansion – he needs the isolation to work on his product. Now, when I write I am capable of doing it in a coffee shop (only for short stints, I am actually writing this blog in a coffee shop right now) or with pure silence/instrumental music (if a neighbor is being loud). So I do understand the benefit of being in your home, by yourself, with silence, and how it makes writing easier. If I could have a pure silence chamber, I would write exclusively in there.
Yet, when I am writing, I am usually writing or creating something that comes from a semblance of reality. The concept of existing in a bubble, in a castle, and writing a screen play (unless it is about living an isolated life and the incurring psychological damage you receive) doesn’t seem possible to me. Where is the material coming from, the ideas, the human characteristics? Then again, everyone is different and I am especially adept at knowing the environments I need to be productive. Perhaps, his is isolation allows his thoughts to hammer on his brain box until something squeaks out his hands.
All I know is I couldn’t do it.
How I Go On…
I realize that someone looked at the Emoji Movie script and said: “How much do you need? This will be brilliant.” Then, somehow, a bunch of actors – T.J. Miller, James Corden, Anna Faris, Patrick Stewart, Sean Hayes – looked at the script, read it, and said: “I’m in!” So… if the Emoji Movie can be birthed into this world and be marketed, I think I will be just fine.
But that ignorance is obliterated when, being an idiot and curious, I searched and learned that the movie had an estimated budget of ~50 million dollars… and made over 200 million in gross revenue. At which point, I begin to doubt the universe and my future.