Where am I now?

You can find me here.

Naivete

I sometimes think about people that scoff at others for being trusting and hopeful. They look on with spiteful amusement as others run into the same walls and slither into the same pitfalls that they themselves fell into. I believe that they fail to see that instead of being 'ahead of the curve', snug in their corrugated shells of mistrust, disdain and condescension, they are instead an active part of an evil that permeates our modern human society. They, as a group, allow the continuation, the transmission if you will, of that most deadly of human diseases: disillusionment. The loss of a belief in the possibility of a greater good. The banishment of hope and the removal of that 'positive' descriptor from their actions, on a subconscious level. The turning inward and downward of one's focus, and the assumption of a(mental) posture akin to a crab; scrabbling and scraping at each other out of repressed anger and hurt.

The extent to which this disease permeates the collective consciousness of modern man is heartbreaking.

I dream of big things. Impossible things...no. Not impossible, just highly improbable given the current state of things...but no. That's also not right. Given the current state of things...the current state of things are just that. Tomorrow might be different if we just change a small bit here, a little there. God forbid we experience any strain in the process of these changes. The modern human is more strain averse than pain averse...in fact I believe that they equate the two, hence the almost pathological fear of exertion that exists today, even on a mental level...but I digress.

In my perfect world aka The Utopia, a mother would be able to leave for work, if she was single and if she so chose, leaving her child unattended and her doors and windows open. Her house would have been childproofed by the state upon the registration of her pregnancy with the relevant medical and municipal authorities. She could hang a schedule on her front door of when the child was to be fed. A sign in the yard would announce her single mother status. Random strangers, who would have no evil designs in their hearts, of if they did they would possess the will to resist them and alerted to her status by the sign, could wander in and look after the baby and feed it at the given times before going along their way. They would follow the best sanitation methods agreed upon by a true World Health Organisation and a powerful but benevolent United Nations. Flocks of children could roam where they wanted, geo-tagged so that their parent(s) and only their parent(s) would know where they were. Naturally these areas would be policed by state sponsored agents and would have child friendly barriers to keep them safe and redirect them with minimal harm. Their tags would naturally degrade over time to eventually disappear sometime between 16 and 21, based on whatever cultural norms the country followed or a mutual agreement between the child and the parent(s).

And so on.

I can hear the collective laughter from you all now...not the kind, amused laughter either. The nasty, scoffing laughter born from your absolute certainty regarding my naivete for even thinking that an im(probable) situation such as this could ever exist in any society peopled by man, who spends more on inventing better and better ways to kill each other (a blog post in and of itself) than on working out ways to feed the starving (with actual frikkin' food!). You laugh and shake your head, secure in your knowledge of my naivete.

See? That is exactly what I am talking about.

More as it develops.

Show, don't tell.

I watched Alice in Wonderland today. I was going to write a blog post about it. Then I watched District 9. That I didn't intend to write anything on because the amount of stuff going on in that movie requires some time and deep thought to process.

By the way, have you seen District 9? You haven't? You need to.

What, then, am I going to write about tonight?

A simple concept that is repeated again and again to and between writers. Show, not tell. Show, not tell. In writing, your prose should be of such quality and precision that it fades into the background and the images, scenes and interactions that you are describing on the page spring to vivid life in the readers minds' eye.

That's my interpretation of the phrase. Alice in Wonderland tries to do it. District 9 does this with no visible effort.

'But wait', you say. 'Am...these are films. Showing is an inherent feature of their composition, so...their ability to do this should come as no surprise to you'. Then you might suggest that a quiet rest would do me good while you go out and call a padded wagon. 'Nervous breakdown...yes, he's got his genres all crossed...indeed. Sure sign of overwork. A few weeks should do him good.'

But no. While a few weeks rest would do me good...well, working rest at least, the fact that I have chosen two films to be the focus of a post on showing not telling is not incongruous. In fact, if you have watched the films in particular, you probably have an inkling of what I am getting at. Each film demonstrates, in film, a skill set that we, as writers, should aspire to possess in our toolbox. Let me begin with Alice in Wonderland.

Side note: does no one realise that Tim Burton is insane? No one? Really? Alright then, back on topic. Alice in Wonderland is a lush yet abrupt offering. The set up and resolution of the film smacks of heavy handed plotting. Its blocky and wooden, feeling like a pair of square brackets surrounding the actual content of the film, Alice's time in Wonderland. The focus of the film, here the film both excels and also falls down. The imagery is lush yet flat (maybe meant for 3d?) and all the human characters stick out from the CGI backgrounds in varying degrees throughout the film. Yet, it was engaging enough for me to look past all that and be interested in the story. Or rather, what I thought the story was trying to be.

In my head it wavered between a feminist tale about a young lady growing up in a society not interested in her having her own opinions and direction and a generally positive tale of overcoming and believing in yourself, no matter what the situation or the odds. Of the two films, however, it is the worse of the two at showing what its trying to say. Alice runs away from a forced marriage in an insane Elizabethan setting which, by the way, would have been ripe for its own movie and runs headlong into a return to Wonderland. There she is tasked with slaying the Jabberwocky as foretold by a magic scroll. At all turns she runs away from this duty, itself a metaphor, but she is drawn in when things come to an inevitable head and no surprise there, goes out and kills it in a satisfying enough fight.

That is the actual story. The story that I've put together for it, the story in my head, comes from hints and small pieces of dialogue and other bits of innuendo that hint at said story. Alice wearing the suit of armour in the final scene, riding out to the final conflict astride the Bandersnatch, a confident young female adult. The Mad Hatter asking her 'Why are you always too tall, or too short?'. Her not wearing a corset or stockings to the garden party early on. Her walking across a moat filled with the heads of the Red Queen's victims, on said floating heads. The caterpillar's constant rebuking of her for not 'knowing herself'. All of these things add up to an attempt at multilayered storytelling that isn't as smooth or as subtle as one would like. Because so many of these points are brought across in dialogue rather than through action or the resolution of a specific conflict (such as when The Hatter drops his sword in disgust after Alice slays the Jabberwocky, right as he was about to slay the Knave of Hearts) they break the storytelling flow and don't ring as true or as deep as they might have. Still, for what it is, its an admirable effort, filled with adequate showing but a lot more obvious telling.

Then we have District 9. Whoo. What can I say about this movie? The final shot had my heart curling up in my chest and I'm not too much of a man to deny that I felt tears at the edges of my eyes as it faded to black. Uncompromising. It breaks several conventions of various genres in its recreation of a story of the 'final days' of its human protagonist, and I put those words in quotations because while true, they don't mean what you will think they mean at first. Indeed, they are his final days in so many different ways. Dear lord. I have to stop and organise my thoughts before I write about this movie.

Uncompromising. That is the word that comes to mind when I think about District 9. Uncompromising. The author and director, one Neill Blomkamp, had a specific vision for what each scene, each environment, each encounter should look like, should play like, should encompass and evoke from the viewer, and they nailed it. To say that this film is a masterpiece of storytelling is an understatement in terms. It is set in Johannesburg. It is a film about aliens, another living race of creatures being treated as less than human. Set in Africa. The parallels are immediate and totally unsubtle. It slaps you in the face that this film is going to be about the African situation and condition, is going to posit opinions and try and educate you about painful subjects that many of you would rather not focus on. But the setup and the trailers, seen here and here, do an excellent job of telling you this while rooting the film at once in modern geopolitical awareness as well as pure, high production value, science fiction action goodness. So the trailers themselves are active parts of the bait and switch that is District 9. Because that is what it is, a bait and switch.

Its structure takes a little getting used to. It is presented as a mix of documentary and storytelling, as a collection of footage of the protagonist from various sources is mixed in with the bits of the story that lay behind them, and snippets of 'live media coverage' of the ongoing events. It sounds odd, but when it is observed it is breathtaking in the way it gels to give us at once the full story in continuous and ongoing counterpoint to the outside world, or 'our' perception, of the events.

You know going in that you are seeing a film rooted in modern international political and social conflicts and stresses, so you walk in prepared and on guard. The film, aware of this, never once tries to engage you on the matter. Not once. It never tries to overtly engage you on these matters. Instead, it does one of the best jobs of showing it to you that I have ever seen. Throughout the film. From start to end. All of the shots used, the environments and situations are hand picked to get across behind all the action going on the messages of this film...and I say messages, because there are a lot. It deals with exploitation on a whole, Africa and apartheid, PMC's, Corporations and evil in its basest, purest form: selfish humans acting for profit with no regard for human life. The dialogue is a part of this showing, again never trying to engage you consciously on these matters but illustrating at every turn the unthinking nature of most people as they go about their lives and even as they spiral into a crisis. Finally, it deals with humanity in a most unique form by asking us, 'what is humanity?', that most essential of qualities that itself is a bundle of such noble principles such as selflessness, love, empathy and respect. Is it being human, or is it something more, something deeper? The answer is resounding yet never told to you. You are made to arrive at it for yourself.

In the end, District 9 illustrates what show, don't tell means far better than Alice. Illustrate, don't elaborate. Allow your audience to wake up to your message in a gradual progression, drawing their own inferences and conclusions from what you have presented and thus making them all the stronger in their minds. Achieving this requires a touch at once light yet powerful. Not easy to achieve, but more than worthy of our cons as creators and writers. It is, encapsulated in film, the method of storytelling that we should all aspire to.

More as it develops!

Blarg 1.

So I was supposed to put up a post about child - parent relationships, and how responsibility gradually, and sometimes abruptly, shifts from the parent to the child over the course of the relationship, and what this might mean for both parties...but I'm not gonna. That post seems to want to be more than one post, and so I will give it the space to percolate, breathe, think or whatever it is that it needs to do before its ready to leave my mind via my fingers and take its place here, on this blog.

So what does that leave us with? It leaves me with one more night of ending the day in a bad mood. A sudden bad mood, brought on by an unconscious action from a really guiltless party. That, however, does not help my mood any.

Its actually not right to call it a mood. Its more of a burning rage seeking to find an outlet, a rage born in annoyance and fuelled by frustration, loneliness (my wife is several thousand miles away) and chemical withdrawal. Smoking. So never a good idea.

Yeah. I really have nothing else to say about this. I find it hard to work when I'm pissed off, and even harder to work when I'm really mad at myself.

So.

More as it develops.

On Football and Divinity.

I am a fan of Brazil. They play the best football in the world. For me that means they play the most skilful, clean, satisfying football to watch and cheer for. They take an almost zen approach to football, not seeming to actively oppose the next team but instead to flow around and through them like water, materializing when needed to score or dispossess them of the ball.

That being said, I pride myself on being a fair minded football fan. I like to think that I (meaning Brazil and I, heh) are above the petty tricks other sides use to gain short term advantages in any football match. Tricks such as handballs (ha!), fouls, blatant diving (everybody dives/acts to some extent) and other nefarious tricks that have become commonplace in the sport of football.

I like to think that we are beyond all that, based on the quality of football that we play. That thought gives me a warm feeling and a (small) comfort that the aura of footballing superiority that we possess is justified.

Then today I watched as Fabiano put on one of the best footballing displays by a Brazilian player in recent memory, one that was disputed mainly because there are two separate instances where it is seemed that he was guilty of a handball. He got a goal from this display, of course. It would not have mattered otherwise. Well. The dismantled defenders that he left in his wake might still have been upset about it.

The rules for handballs in football can be found here. They're quite clear and in light of what they say its clear that Fabiano handled the ball not once, but twice on his way to scoring that goal. This is not as bad as Rivaldo in his day, but still, its far from great. Its not what I hold myself and my team to.

Or is it?

Football is a sport that's about as much as getting away with what you can, as it is winning by the rules. That's why there are referees to ensure that players stick to the rules as much as can be enforced. This goes for all players, my lauded Brazilian side included.

What does this happening then mean for me, with regards to my belief in their superior play? Does it mean that Brazil is now tarnished in my eyes, a team filled with charlatans and holier-than-thou fakers where football is concerned?

Hardly. What it means is that the reality of football is that you get away with what you can get away with. Whether what you did was blatant or sneaky, if the referee, God bless his human soul, doesn't notice it, then you will get away with it.

That's it. Brazil is a superior football side composed of human beings, beings who will still try and cheat now and then. I can argue that they don't do it anywhere nearly as often as other teams, or say that his actions could be put down to the heat of the moment, but it would ring false to me. Handballs included, his display is still a dazzling one by a superior player. Its now just a display by a human being, however, not some footballing god on a team of footballing gods that should be worshipped.

A hard realization, but not the hardest one I've had to face in my short life.

Still, its not so bad.

Rivaldo used to be my favourite player.

More as it develops!

Just Gonna Wing It, by God!

So.

I've restarted this blog too many times to count. Really. However, I do believe now that each time was for the wrong reason. I was blogging because it was the fashionable thing to do (ha!), I was bored, I wanted to create a name for myself online...all these bullshit reasons.

All of them fake. All of them wrong.

That is not to say that blogging for these reasons is wrong per se...they were just the wrong reasons for me to be blogging. Your reasons for doing something, anything, have to be good enough reasons to keep you motivated. To keep you doing it. To keep you getting up everyday and going back to that little room downstairs of your consciousness where your creative impulses lurk, waiting to jump you and drag you into the dark.

That's a scary place to have to live in, day in and day out. It's also one of the most lonely and potentially disheartening places to have to inhabit if you're not filled with complete confidence that every one of your pieces is, in fact, a masterpiece.

Who is really? George Lucas? You see how his recent efforts turned out.

Those reasons were entirely the wrong reasons for me to be blogging, or writing, which is what blogging really is. Some bloggers are genre writers; romance, slice of life, some are horribly boring or provide misinformed opinions about everything under the sun...but its still all just writing. At least, it is to me.

I write because these words fill up my head on a daily basis, and if I don't get them out they'll clog my throat and fill my ears and come spilling out of my nose and rattle around in my eyes and I'll run screaming out of the house and plow through the gate, scamper into the road and get hit by a passing truck.

So.

I write to keep myself alive. That's a good enough reason for me, I think, to get up everyday and keep doing this.

Yeah, works for me. That's my story and I'll revise it as I see fit.

More as it develops!

The Existence of Evil.

.....its not often that you (royal), come in contact with something that....defies description. All the rationalization that you apply to it is baked away by the furious heat of its focused maliciousness like so much dry tissue paper. Any attempts to label it as a misunderstanding of intentions, someone who is misunderstood, or a simple (or even a very complex) misrepresentation of events/intentions pales, withers and falls to dust and ashes before the overwhelming viciousness and calculating nature of its actions. Your mind recoils from the serpentine and self destructive reasoning that could have birthed the scenario being observed, and wraps back upon itself in an attempt to rewind time, and forget to remember that it had ever come in contact with a being of this nature.

That, dear constant reader, is evil.

I'm not talking world shaking, global scale evil, either. No, not being the head of a columbian cartel who makes sure to raise his kids in the best schools money can buy (as far away from the drug trade as possible) evil, or the head of a terrorist organisation going for maximum kill with each attack evil, or the evil of a successful politician. No. I am talking about simple (....nothing about this is simple, let me tell you), small scale, personal, evil. The kind of evil that one individual can get up to, if they're at least a median level of intelligence, are determined and driven (as these people often are) and focused on their goals, and the devil take who they have to walk over to get there. The evil that starts, more often than not, out of selfishness, insensitivity, and an inability...or an unwillingness to handle the consequences of the actions that one chooses to be involved in. Such is the worst kind of evil, for it appears small, is couched in actions that are, if observed, ambiguous at best, and can and ofttimes will be dismissed in the light of the persona that is built, for the express purpose of being the smokescreen behind which such actions will be hidden.

I now understand the meaning of the term cunning.

What do you do in the face of such evil? Such people are no doubt unhinged in some way, shape or form......I do not believe that the essential human condition, or human nature, as we have coined it, is one of evil. Therefore, such persons that become evil, are without a doubt, unhinged, or, to put it in less glamorous terms, are a little sick in their heads. Whether this is due to an abusive childhood, a sequence of unfortunate events (...one very bad day can send someone over the edge....look at the joker) or a chemical imbalance (a catchall term for a set of faulty wiring in the human breaker, the brain) is irrelevant to the immediacy of combating the effects those actions can have on one's life. The majority of us are reactionary creatures in our daily lives, and the thought of someone taking active, strategic actions against us, in a concerted effort to achieve some petty aim with no consideration for our own lives and wellbeing...well, the thought can be a little unsettling, and more than a little disturbing.

How does one combat such evil?

More as it develops