Save Your Money! An Experience I'll Never Pay for Again

By Emily Walls

 We came for the fish. We left with perspective. This is the story of five sojourners who bought the water snake oil.

Spoiler: These faces are doing one whole hell of a lot of foreshadowing right now.

In our commute from Batavia to Chicago that morning, the sky, in her generosity, lavished upon us a beneficent deluge and soaked us through in her magnanimity. The four winds, not to be outdone, meted out a handsome contribution to the cause, and so it was that by the time we walked from the train station to the double doors of the aquarium, we received the full benefit of the weather's kind donations. Sopping and shivering in the ticket line, we reached into the bottoms of our leaky pockets for the admission fee we had calculated the day before, but wait!, one among us must have said. For just a few hard-earned dollars more, we could enjoy a 4-D Experience! Not one, not two, not even three, but FOUR dimensions (madness!) were available to us for a fraction of an hour's wages. Moreover, the footage in which we would immerse ourselves like never before (and perhaps be linked to telepathically?) was from Planet Earth, the justly popular BBC show we knew and loved. We relinquished the inflated fare and forfeited our souls to Charon, who ferried us gleefully across the Styx and into the theater.

We arrived in Hades, though we did not yet know how far we had strayed from Heaven's gates. We affixed our comically oversized 3-D glasses to our faces—the first humiliation the theater thrust upon us—and relaxed in our seats as the lights dimmed. At last, we would have peace.

The problems began during the on-screen introduction to the 4-D Experience. In a series of shots showcasing the wonders of 3-D, an old man on camera spat a mouthful of water straight at the lens. The scene was (I'm going to spoil for you right now) the most exciting shot in the entire production. The scene was also our introduction to the fourth dimension so liberally lauded in the aquarium's marketing paraphernalia. As the water gushed from the old man's mouth on screen, we in the audience were treated to a simulated effect in the audience: a languid spray of water that mastered its indolence just enough to humidify our already saturated faces.

Perplexed but undeterred, we persevered to the feature presentation. After all, our first foray into the fourth dimension came only during the teaser. Surely the feature, with its high budget and carefully calculated effects, would take us to worlds hitherto unseen. It began by taking us to Earth, a world hitherto seen. The footage showed Earth from space, which, you may remember from science class, is a vacuum. How best could one simulate a vacuum? Why, with wind, of course. Six enormous fans, three per side of the screen, breathed into life and bellowed upon us their frigid remonstrances. Our already dampened skin received blow after shuddering blow from the wheezing propellers as the spaceship on screen soared endlessly through the emptiness.

Before the hypothermia progressively reduced our consciousness, we were able to discern in that initial, eternal shot that the footage was familiar. It was the same exact footage, in fact, that we had seen on television months before, but this time a 3-D effect had been tacked on clumsily during post-production.

Nevertheless, we continued. We had paid our five dollars and, by George, we were determined to get a five-dollar thrashing. The next few scenes gave us alternating wind and mist, as coordinating scenes flashed before us. Naturally, if saltwater surged from a distant whale's blowhole on film, we experienced a freshwater spray from the seats in front of us. If gazelles leaped through the Serengeti, an icy blast was the obvious corollary. We huddled in our seats, our arms wrapped close around us and our feet sacrificed to the spray to give our soggy faces a reprieve. 

If we could only burrow into our seats, we would find shelter from the screen, we thought. Foolishly. Deeper and deeper into our seats we crouched until a water snake on screen announced our final humiliation. As Sigourney Weaver commentated, the serpent slithered through the water in great, fluid motions. For its final moment on camera, the snake chose to glide toward the camera just a touch faster. It did not strike. It did not spook. It just picked up the pace. In the theater, we were informed of the creature's accelerated ambulation in front of us by swift, hard stabs in the back. Plastic rods about three inches long and a quarter inch in diameter emerged from their lairs in the backs of our seats and jabbed us directly in the spine. We lunged forward reflexively and received a prompt spray of water straight in the eyes.

We were bruised. We were blind. We were shivering. We were wet.

The credits rolled before us, and as the house lights lifted, we solicited each other for the kind of sympathy that only comes through shared experience. We stumbled out of the theater colder, damper, and, I hope, enlightened. Only time, the true fourth dimension, will tell.

Pixar vs. Miyazaki (Someone Had to do it...Right?)

By Jonny Walls

Hayao Miyazaki is one of Japan's most celebrated filmmakers. He is the mastermind behind many of the greatest entries in the formidable Studio Ghibli canon, including such films as Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, My Neighbor Totoro, Howl's Moving Castle, and many more.

From Spirited Away

Pixar animation studios are the American outfit behind the Toy Story series, The Incredibles, Ratatouille, Wall-E, Finding Nemo, and other modern classics. They are the the innovators responsible for birthing that particular style of computer animation which has since become nearly ubiquitous.

 I hope that what first struck you about the title of this piece is how unnecessary it is to try and weigh Miyazaki's work against Pixar's. I hope you rushed to this piece in wrath, intending to tell me how trivial of a notion it would be. Because you'd be right.

And yet, here we are.

Perhaps the triviality behind this concept is the very thing that intrigues: Miyazaki and Pixar are both so different and so good. It's a wonder they're able to occupy such vast expanses of greatness within the animated realm, and experience so little crossover. And they're not different in the way Jaws and The Jerk are different, or the way Alien and Stranger than Fiction are different. Those wonderful films all vary on the surface, but share similar bones in terms of three act structure, character arcs, and the like.

Pixar's films, on one hand, employ computer-generated animation wherein every angle, every straight or curved line, every color, every frame, conform to perfection. They are modern masterpieces of the three act structure and Western storytelling, which they have it down to a science. They embody everything good and effective about the style (and they're animated to boot). For this reason, they are in many ways similar, but in many ways the polar opposite, of Miyazaki's films.

Miyazaki's films employ old school, hand drawn animation. They breathe the air of slight imperfection and glow with the light of the human touch. Though I'm no expert in Eastern storytelling, I'm going to go out on a limb and claim that Miyazaki's films embody, in no small way, a large part of what Eastern storytelling is all about. Far fetched, I know, as he is a Japanese filmmaker, but there you have it.

Culture Shock

The first time I saw Spirited Away, my first Miyazaki film, I knew I loved what I'd seen, but I wasn't quite sure what I had seen either. I remember thinking that much must have been lost in translation from a literal, linguistics standpoint, as well as a cultural, thematic standpoint.

In one early scene in Spirited Away, the protagonist, a young girl named Chihiro, must cross an entire bridge while holding her breath. If she fails to do so, she will become visible to the magical creatures and spirits all around her, possibly exposing herself to danger. It's never explained exactly why holding her breath will keep her invisible or how the origins of this bizarre system came about, and the gimmick doesn't reappear in act three. It just pops up for one scene and is forgotten in the ether of this magical world.

Now, if this were a Pixar film, the breath-holding concept would be thoroughly motivated and explained, and it would have a specific purpose beyond the immediate problem at hand—Chihiro crossing the bridge. And, almost surely, it would resurface in act three, just when we'd forgotten about it, and play some role in redeeming the protagonist. Only this time she'd be able to master the technique, thus bringing the vision of her growth full circle. And this would happen because that's what well-oiled, watertight three act structure films do. Nothing is frivolous. Nothing is arbitrary. Nothing happens just because.

But with Spirited Away and many of Miyazaki's other films, a plot device (if one can even label it such) like the breath-holding concept is just that: arbitrary. In an interview about Spirited Away, Miyazaki addresses this very scene. He says that he wanted to employ some arbitrary rule such as holding one's breath to remain invisible, because that's the way children's games often go. Arbitrary rules are imagined and applied, without necessity of explanation.

Arbitrary is normally the enemy of good storytelling. In a Western style story, it serves only to weaken the foundation, yet with Miyazaki, it strengthens the vision of the world he's created. As a Western viewer, it feels strange at first, but when his films and others like it are accepted on their own terms, they take a from of their own that is equally rich.

Experience vs Experience

The big difference in the two styles can be neatly summarized in the way that they approach the word "Experience." In both cases, the goal is to create a beautiful, compelling, and unique Experience for the viewer, and both camps succeed. But Pixar's films approach Experience, first and foremost, as something to be drawn upon. From the heart-wrenching final scenes of Toy Story 3 or Up to the odd familiarity of Marlin's anxiety in Finding Nemo, Pixar's films use our own lives and experiences, but portray them from alternate points of view, which helps us see our own all the more clearly.

Miyazaki, who approaches experience from the other angle, seeks to create a new experience for the viewer. Or put another way, he strives simply to provide an environment in which unique experiences may be cultivated. It may be a bathhouse for the spirits where every hand-drawn frame oozes an indefinable, otherworldly quality, or it could be a magical moving castle with a rotating portal to different kingdoms in the blustery hills of some far off, enchanted world. He's not interested in guiding us all to the same place; he simply seeks to beckon us away from home.

It's Not So Cut and Dried as Black and White, Up and Down, East or...

The truth is that Pixar's films, while running a tight and deliberate course, also do amazing things to sweep us up in their wonder, above and beyond the plot. These small touches range from a quick shot of a baby fish falling off of a "trampoline" and bursting into tears, to the glowing lights of Paris in the background of a scene that's actually about a lost rat. But the main objectives of these films are all driven by singular purpose and ruthless efficiency. And bravo to Pixar for that. I hope they carry on showing us our own lives in new and exceedingly entertaining lights, not wasting a single frame along the way.

Conversely, Miyazaki's films aren't all floating images and whimsical allusions to the most abstract hints of reality. (Some, such as My Neighbor Totoro, show that Mr. Miyazaki can tell stories with the best of them in any fashion he desires.) Even in his most abstract form, Miyazaki's films still make use of plot, character development, and purpose, but the viewer should remember that these elements sometimes lie in the shadows of the overall experience he wishes for us. He is a true marvel and one of the rare filmmakers who can actually pull it off.

The Big Takeaway

Don't be stupid enough to try to compare Miyazaki's films with Pixar's. In fact, don't be stupid enough to compare any films from a strange culture to any Western films. If there's a lesson in here (and I'm not positive there is), it's that Experience comes in many forms and needn't be married to one style.

By all means, go see Brave this summer. Enjoy it. But if you've never checked out a Miyazaki film, or if you have and found it off-putting, go give some of his stuff a look. You just may feel yourself being taken away from home, and what's more, you may like it.

By Jonny Walls

Remembering Mama Jo

By Emily Walls

My grandmother screamed routinely in movie theaters. I'm not just talking Psycho. I'm talking Seabiscuit.

She prepared and froze her Thanksgiving casseroles before Halloween, her immaculate freezer a refugee camp for bulk-purchased Cool Whip and stalks of rhubarb.

When she trumped my trick in Euchre, she sang her high school fight song in its entirety.

For holidays, my family traveled from four states away to see her, and we always found her furniture covered in bedsheets "to keep it nice for company."

She ironed my grandfather's underwear. When I objected to the futility of de-wrinkling hidden boxer briefs, she responded, "Ah, but you've never seen him in his underwear."

My sister likes to say that our Mama Jo never shoveled snow a day in her life; she swept it with a broom as it fell.

"Towels are for sissies," my grandmother must have thought, because I never saw her use them on her trek down the hallway to her bedroom after a bath, her clothes folded neatly in her arms.

When I was a child, I feared my grandma, at least in part because I was not allowed to call her "Grandma." She insisted on being known as "Mama Jo." Grandmas were old, feeble, dowdy; Mama Jo was anything but. Once when I was five years old, I said to her, "Thank you, Grandma." She whipped around, pointed her finger at me about an inch from my nose, and shouted, "WHAT did you call me?" I would have pooped my pants right there if I weren't even more afraid of spoiling her white carpet. No one in the world but my Mama Jo ever had the audacity to keep white carpet pristine and plush for twenty plus years. She was manic about cleaning, so much so that if you wanted to talk to her you had to follow her around while she straightened and folded and dusted and wiped.

I avoided her in my younger years, but as I aged I sought her company more. She always spoke in superlatives, so I was sure to get marvelous feedback from her for any story I told. I could count on her for a "That's terrific, honey" or a "Well doesn't that beat all," no matter how dull my tale. When it was her turn to tell a story, she was magnetic. She whooped and hollered. She shook her head in dismay or elation, as the situation warranted, and she splayed her fingers wider and wider with the increasing intensity of her story. Her energy was boundless, so it's no wonder that friends gathered to her in droves.

I remember one particular conversation I had with her in 2003. On summer break after my freshman year of college, I visited my parents, who were temporarily living with my grandmother. Mama Jo and I stayed up late talking, as we often did, and she launched into what was more or less her life story. I had never heard it all in sequence the way she told it that night, so I was fascinated by each step. She told me about her parents' clothing store in Logansport, Indiana, and how she had spent her childhood in that town. She adored her mother (who she only ever called "Mother"), and she told me about watching Mother put on her lipstick to get ready for a night of cards and conversation with their supper club. I never met my great-grandmother, but I'll be she was charismatic like her daughter.

Mama Jo also told me about her older brother, Bill, who had spina bifida, if I recall correctly. He had limited or no use of his legs, so when he was a child he got around on a little cart pulled by a goat. Mama Jo loved Bill and toddled after him everywhere. When they were older, he played piano in a kind of a big band outfit, and she sat in on practices and danced along and had herself a time. She was in her early teens at the time, so it was extra special to her that Bill let her, his little sister, tag along with the band. He was her hero.

As Mama Jo's story progressed, she eventually got to the later years of her loved ones and ultimately to Bill's death. The details are fuzzy for me, but I think Bill died of cancer. He was in the hospital, declining rapidly, and Mama Jo went to see him. Bill had become a Christian just a short time before, so he was ecstatic with joy despite his pain. I remember that when she told me about Bill's death, Mama Jo was cleaning her kitchen counters (of course). She wiped and wiped the same spot as she spoke, and her tears fell to the end of her nose and dropped onto the counter she was cleaning.

"I had relied on Bill for so long, you see," she said. "I saw him there in the hospital and we both knew he was going soon. I said to him, 'Bill, what am I going to do without you?' He said, 'You've got Bob [my grandpa] and the kids, Joan. You'll be fine. This isn't the end.'" Mama Jo sobbed in earnest and paused in her cleaning to wipe her nose. "So Bill died soon after."

She said it so simply and moved on quickly to other stories, but now when I recall that night in 2003, my thoughts go immediately to what she said about her last conversation with Bill. That little snippet was significant to me, and for many years I tried to figure out why. It was only in this last year, in fact a month before my dear Mama Jo's death, that I realized why her words had such weight with me: They would one day be my own.

After a severe stroke in 2004, Mama Jo began the period of mental and physical decline that would make up the rest of her life. The stroke robbed her of her energy and sharpness, but it was encephalitis in 2007 that took away her short-term memory. When I visited her in recent years, I gave her lots of hugs and told her constantly that I loved her, but I never said to her what I was really thinking: What am I going to do without you? A month before Mama Jo died, I got a call from my mom that Mama Jo had taken a turn for the worse, perhaps due to another stroke, and that Mama Jo was in quite a bit of pain. Naturally I cried when I got the news, and I turned to Jonny for comfort. He held me and shushed me and stroked my hair, and he asked me gently, "How do you think you'll feel when she dies?"

I considered for a few moments and then said, "I think I'll rejoice. I don't want her to go, but I know that I only want her here for my own benefit. I like that I still get to hear her voice and that she tells me she loves me every time I see her, but I hate that she's in pain now. Mentally, she's been gone a long time. I know she'll be happier with Jesus, but it's hard to let her go."

Soon after, Mama Jo's conversation with Bill came to my mind, and I realized that in that conversation in 2003, she had answered my future question. Like Mama Jo had done before me, I asked, "What am I going to do without you?" and like Bill's response, the answer came. "You'll be fine. This isn't the end."

When we buried Mama Jo on New Years Eve of this last year, my family gathered around her grave to shovel dirt onto her lowered casket. We prayed prayers of thanksgiving, and as I watched my family take turns digging into the earth and sprinkling a covering over her grave, I had an irrepressible and inappropriate impulse to laugh. I had to hide my face to keep my wide grin out of sight of my mourning relatives. Nothing about death is funny, but I found that I could not help rejoicing that burial, an act of finality, was not in fact final. It was not the end for Mama Jo or for Bill, and it wasn't the end for me.

Since that cold December day, I've gone through different stages of mourning for Mama Jo. I still cry sometimes, and she would laugh to know that the triggers are usually cleaning-related. I know there is more to process with her death, particularly because she was my third grandparent to pass away, and I am now beginning to mourn, not just her, but her entire generation.

There is comfort too. That night that Mama Jo told me her life story, she also told me another bit of information. She told me that she had been praying for my husband and that she had just purchased my wedding gift: Oneida silverware from L. S. Ayres. This was news to me, especially because I wasn't dating anyone and in fact had NEVER dated anyone. I was peeved too, because she refused to give me the silverware early and told me I would only get it when I got married.

"But that's archaic," I said. "What if I never get married? Are single people to eat with their hands?"

She was indomitable, as always. "Oh, you'll get married," she said. "And he'll be good-looking too. I know it."

On May 15, 2009, I married Jonny Walls, a looker, on a beach in North Carolina. Mama Jo came to the wedding, but in her advanced state of decline she did not recognize Jonny (though she had met him many times before), and she forgot the ceremony minutes after it happened. Naturally, she did not remember to get me a wedding gift, but as was so typical for her, she had prepared years in advance with that silverware from L. S. Ayers. A few months after the wedding, I unpacked the silverware that was finally mine, and as I grabbed a couple of spoons from the box, the receipt she had included fell to the floor. I picked it up and checked the date. She had purchased the silverware on May 15, 2003, six years to the day before I got married.

I'm looking forward to having a good laugh with her over that one when I see her again.

Asking the Question and Chasing the Game: The Story of a Comeback

By Josh Corman

The question-askingest SoB I know.

Asking the Question

Up until a few years ago, I thought that I had heard every sports-related cliché and metaphor in existence. Then I started watching soccer. It didn’t take me long to realize that soccer commentators – my favorite is the darkly humorous yet empathetic Ian Darke – possess a diverse, insightful vocabulary all their own, perfectly suited to mirror the nuance of The Beautiful Game and - if I can be grandiose for a moment - life.

I’ll share two expressions which I had never heard before I started supporting Liverpool Football Club of the English Premier League (imagine you were the parent of a bright child whose behavior and performance in school fluctuated so violently that you alternately believed he should apply to Harvard or be given up for adoption – that’s what supporting Liverpool is like, in case you need a frame of reference). The first is “asking the question,” and the second is “chasing the game.” I want to examine both of these expressions for their significance on and off the pitch.

“Asking the question” can be loosely defined as “prodding your opponent in a variety of ways, hoping to discover a weak link in their defenses.” Obviously, the concept itself isn’t unique to soccer. A quarterback hurling a deep ball early in the first half to gauge how well a cornerback is covering a star receiver is “asking the question.” Watch any basketball team try to penetrate a zone defense and you’ll see what appears to be a series of non-committal and innocuous passes, but what you’re really observing is a series of increasingly pressing questions. The offense just needs one to go unanswered, and they’ll strike.

In soccer, the potential payoff for “asking the question” is more immense than in any other sport I can think of. A goal is approximately equivalent to two touchdowns in American football, a twenty to nothing run in basketball, or a Grand Slam in baseball – it doesn’t represent an unconquerable deficit, but it makes the going very tough for the opposition. And so teams whip crosses into the penalty area, push their right and left backs up the field to increase pressure on the defense, attempt intricate pass combinations designed to catch a defender wrong-footed, and rip twenty-five yard rifle-shots just to make sure the keeper is on his toes, all in the interest of procuring that most critical accomplishment in the entire sport: the break-through goal.

If you watch soccer, you might be nodding along at this point. If not, you’re likely thinking, ‘Well, obviously. Why the hell doesn’t everybody just “ask the question” until they get a goal or three?’ The answer is simple. “Asking the question” is a risk every time, and mitigating risk is a huge part of what most soccer teams do during their ninety minutes on the pitch. Often, mid-level clubs achieve success by toothlessly passing back to their own keeper and pushing forward only slightly, rarely daring to “ask the question” in any serious capacity. By playing it safe, they hope to keep the game close against more dynamic clubs and, at worst, eke out a draw. “Asking the question” is too dangerous for them to attempt with any real flair or consistency, because more capable sides will often have a ready answer. They’ll clear a probing cross to safety and surge forward in a fluid counter-attack, visibly, tangibly shifting momentum and catching their meeker, milder counterparts with their pants down.

Yes, “asking the question” is always a risk, but the dominant clubs, ones to whom adjectives like “inspired,” “powerful,” “invigorated,” and “masterful” can be routinely applied, “ask the question” constantly. They don’t delude themselves into believing that mere possession equals dominance. Possession is an illusion of a statistic. Soccer isn’t about safely cradling the ball between the midfield and center backs. Possession is only as valuable as what you do with it, and “asking the question” is the best way to make possession count.

Chasing the Game

Goalless draws are admittedly abhorrent. In fact, I’d bet that the primary reason that soccer isn’t more popular in America has less to do with its ill-grasped nuance or the lack of an elite domestic league. Rather, I think that the concept of draws - altogether repugnant to the American sports audience as a collective, goalless draws doubly so - kills the idea of soccer before it's given an honest chance. We just don’t like the idea of subjecting ourselves to ninety-plus minutes of a contest in which neither side achieves their objective. We love meritocracies and hierarchies, and feel like sports should reflect this love.

I’ve seen the dull side of the game and mostly come to terms with it. Of course it’s still maddening to watch a team deliberately hold out for a draw instead of “asking the question” of the opposition even once during a lifeless back-pass-fest, but those games are actually rarer than the average soccer-hater would have you believe.

What happens more often is that the teams feel each other out - “asking the question” a few times and applying all that open reconnaissance to a developing strategy - until one of them gets a goal. Then, something changes. Faced with a one goal deficit, the team on the short side of the scoreboard has a critical strategic (and moral, really) decision to make. They can keep doing what got them a goal down, or they can “chase the game.”

A team that “chases the game” is a little desperate, they feel cornered, and, backs to the wall, they’ve realized that their last best shot is to come out swinging. It might start with a more aggressive formation or more persistent attempts to pass the ball into attacking position, but no matter the strategy, a team “chasing the game” is a team qualitatively different from that more reserved version of itself. The change in perspective ignites something in a team that’s a goal down. They often spark to life as though a switch has been flipped and their confidence builds, they push up the field and take chances, firing balls into empty spaces filled almost magically by their sprinting teammates, they pass and cut and put the other team on their heels. And then, they score.

Watching the deciding moments of a soccer match level at a goal apiece is almost like watching a different sport. With little time left and a lot to be gained by clear victory, both sides are “chasing the game,” and the pitch suddenly seems wide open. The mad scramble for the winning goal results in fluid, dynamic soccer that represents the way the game was meant to be played, the best it has to offer. And when you see this, the same thought will likely occur to you that occurs to me every time I watch it unfold: ‘Why don’t they play like this for the whole ninety minutes?’

But the answer is the same as the answer to the earlier question: fear. Worry. Risk-mitigation. There is something inside players and managers, especially those who play for a side that doesn’t have the financial or geographical advantages of a Manchester City or Barcelona, that compels them to play things close to the vest, maybe send the occasional long ball in to a striker, and hope for an early break-through. I’ve seen it time and time again. That first goal, the one that shoots more conservative game plans all to hell and forces the losing team to “chase the game,” is sometimes the very thing that actually wins the game for the team that gave it up, because suddenly just holding the ball and waiting for something lucky to happen doesn’t make sense any more.

The Beautiful Game

I’ve been teaching high school English for four years now. I have a pretty cushy gig by high school English teacher standards, actually. Four sections of AP English Language and Composition with a roster of kids who are almost all decent and courteous and intelligent and serious about their school work. I like the people in my department and get along well with the administration, plus I’m pretty good at the job itself.

None of these things is all that important, however, because I can count on one hand the number of days in four years that I’ve come home from work and felt fulfilled or content. My job does nothing for my spirit. It doesn’t speak to my purpose, or offer me a chance to express my talent and intelligence in their highest forms. This is just a fancy way of saying that I don’t much like what I do.

I never wanted to be an English teacher, I just thought I did. I thought this because I assumed that there exists a relationship between loving to read and write and teaching English. This may surprise you, but the two have almost nothing to do with one another. It didn’t take me long to realize this, and for four years, I’ve been holding the ball in the midfield, booting it left to right, dropping it to the center back, then to the goalie, half-heartedly “asking the (occasional) question,” waiting for something lucky to happen. I’m sure you can imagine how much fun this would be to live through. Just like watching a goalless draw. I haven’t been losing, really, because I’ve done some writing, and I have a job that’s at least tangentially connected to my interests, but I’ve not been winning either.

These thoughts and dozens of others like them have been weighing on me for a while now, and at some point during the last couple of weeks, those forces in my life which are opposed to my joy and satisfaction scored a break-through. I was suddenly down a goal, shocked at how quickly it had all happened, seriously wondering about my capability to recover. The choice resulting from this blow was simple, though not easy. I could choose to stay the course, knocking the ball around and hoping for a break that wasn’t likely to ever come.

Or, I could “chase the game.”

I started pushing back against those oppositional forces. I started “asking the question” again and again. What do I want to do? And what has to change for that to happen? At first, the opposition repelled my advances. Fears over finances and security and failure countered my attacks ferociously. But I kept pushing, and finally, the opposing defenses broke down.

It started, of all things, with an argument my wife and I had. Like a lot of arguments, this one started over nothing particularly important, but led to a revelation: It’s awful doing a job that feels in no way like what you’ve been built to do. I said this to my wife, and her only response was, “Then do it. We’ll make it work.”

I’ve never stood on the pitch at Anfield, Liverpool’s home stadium, sweating, exhausted, staring a deficit in the eye, only to have 50,000 flag-waving supporters rise to their feet and belt out Liverpool’s club anthem, “You’ll Never Walk Alone,” but I think it would feel something like hearing those seven words from my wife: Then do it. We’ll make it work. It’s risky, I know. But the choice to chase my passion is my equalizer.

The game is level at a goal apiece, and I’ve got the opposition on its heels.

By Josh Corman

Follow me on Twitter @JoshACorman

A Russian Pill for the Postmodern Blues

By Emily Walls

My generation is obsessed with irony. In Internet comments, Tweets, TV shows, and face-to-face conversation, we seem incapable of authenticity. April Ludgate of Parks and Rec is our poster child, but of course the poster is hung only in tongue-in-cheek self-reference. The writers of The Simpsons summed it up more than a decade ago in this gag from "Homerpalooza."

Irony and its cousin, metaphor, can be powerful, but I think when we use them exclusively, we dilute their virtue. In literature and art, our authors and filmmakers most often use metaphor to expose truth, and they are effective. American Beauty, Pan's Labyrinth and Toy Story 3 deftly expose deep longing within us, but they do it parabolically. In our art, subtlety is king, and irony is second in command. We are, in fact, so steeped in irony, much like the Simpsons characters, that straightforward declaration is uncouth, even vulgar. It's all right, we suppose, in the proper media, like Opinion sections and documentaries, but it is repugnant and amateur in fiction. We've seen it done poorly too many times to give it credence. Saved, Robinson Crusoe, Remember the Titans, even parts of my favorite book of all time, Jane Eyre, stumble into didacticism. In response, we stick with ever-faithful metaphor. Because we have only learned to draw stick figures, we eschew portraits altogether, but I believe that the realism of a Rembrandt can be just as stirring, sometimes more so, than the abstractions of a Picasso. Or in unambiguous terms, metaphor is useful but not all-encompassing, so when we reject explicit storytelling—both in plot and dialogue—we needlessly limit our expression.

This Picasso (1937) is good.

This Picasso (1895) is also good.

For proof, let's look to the master of straightforward dialogue, Fyodor Dostoevsky. His characters in The Brothers Karamazov are as ideologically diverse as they are fascinating. When I read the story last summer, I was two hundred pages in before I realized the plot had barely moved. The characters were so engaging, their dialogue so provocative, I had not noticed the glacier-esque plot. What's more, their conversations were philosophically charged, so much so that if I were inclined, I could spend weeks dissecting and studying each exchange. I'm not exaggerating. I often found myself mentally developing curricula for imaginary book circles I led (with an iron fist and a garish hat).

In The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky takes the best conversations you've had in the last decade, your wandering thoughts in the shower, your quiet reflections at night just before you fall asleep, and your meditations on sermons and speeches, divides them among a dozen characters, and gives them back to you in organized and clear discussion. Consider the following dialogue, a small portion of a discussion on the problem of evil:

...and therefore I absolutely renounce all higher harmony. It is not worth one little tear of even that one tormented child who beat her chest with her little fist and prayed to 'dear God' in a stinking outhouse with her unredeemed tears! Not worth it, because her tears remained unredeemed. They must be redeemed, otherwise there can be no harmony. But how, how will you redeem them? Is it possible? Can they be redeemed by being avenged? But what do I care if they are avenged, what do I care if the tormentors are in hell, what can hell set right here, if these ones have already been tormented? And where is the harmony, if there is hell?...I don't want harmony, for love of mankind I don't want it. I want to remain with unrequited suffering. I'd rather remain with my unrequited suffering and my unquenched indignation, even if I am wrong. Besides, they have put too high a price on harmony; we can't afford to pay so much for admission. And therefore I hasten to return my ticket....which is what I am doing. It's not that I don't accept God, Alyosha, I just most respectfully return him the ticket."

The entire novel is filled with conversations on compassion, faith, God, sin—the biggies. When I read it, I was struck by the dialogue's unique style. It challenged me, not just as a reader, but as a human being, to explore my own thoughts. I could see my own ideas through the characters' vantages, and although Ivan, Dmitri, and Alyosha were not always able to articulate their convictions, the words they used sounded like my own inner monologues. I shared in their struggles to understand, and I grew more decisive as they did.

And that's what is missing from modern storytelling, precisely because our stories are not modern at all—they are postmodern. Our dialogue in art reflects our actual dialogue, which is largely either waffling and noncommittal or insolent and satirical. When we take offense at every opinion and villanize every solid stance, not for its substance but for its existence, it's no wonder that our literary characters hint rather than declare. We have rebelled forcefully against modernism and now fall too often into insipidity. Authentic, straightforward storytelling is difficult to master, but it's a valuable tool too often overlooked.

Metaphor can be powerful and effective, but we overuse it to our detriment. Let's add another skill to our repertoire: candor. Both in art and in life, let's peel back the layers of ambiguity and for once, naked and raw, say what we mean.

A 12-Bar Christmas Carol, Sung by a Chorus of Vikings: An Assessment of Led Zeppelin

By Josh Corman

The Ghost of Zeppelin Past

Robert Plant (left) wore those jeans from 1968-1971,
when he finally had to be cut out of them.

For probably four solid months after I got my driver's license, my in-car listening pattern went something like: I, II, III, IV, Houses of The Holy, Physical Graffiti; repeat, with little variation. If you're wondering why Presence, In Through the Out Door, or Coda didn't join the rotation, it's because I'd heard that those three albums represented a pretty sharp decline in quality, and since I could not at that time imagine a reality in which everything the Great Zep touched did not turn instantly and irrevocably into gold, I avoided them, just in case it was true. Instead, I added the live compilation BBC Sessions into the mix and was waiting in line at Wal-Mart when How the West Was Won, their remastered three-disc live album culled mostly from their swaggering prime, went on sale. Led Zeppelin stormed the castle, and they almost took the keep. Many were the moments (most of them probably right in the middle of "When the Levee Breaks") when I sat in contemplation, wondering if Zeppelin had not indeed taken over the title of my favorite band of all time.

I stopped wondering after a while. The Fab Four built an impenetrable fortress atop my musical mountain, and Zep was content to set up residence on a minor outcrop just below the summit, where they have stayed ever since.

I know I'm throwing a lot of metaphors at you, but this is important.

A few months ago, Emily, Jonny, and I were having a conversation about possible VI pieces, and Emily intimated that she had an idea that had been brewing for quite some time, but that she wanted to run it by me first. Led Zeppelin had started to annoy her, she said. She probably heard the breath catch in my throat and imagined me going into cardiac arrest, because she took speedy pains to qualify her position. Mostly, she chalked it up to living in Los Angeles and being pummeled with Led Zeppelin by just about every radio station upon which she stumbled. "Stairway to Heaven," "Kashmir," and "Whole Lotta Love," over and over and over. She said she still "liked" them (I could hear the air-quotes in her voice) in some general sense, or maybe it was that she "understood" why some people - some people, as though she'd forgotten who she was talking to - really like them, but they just weren't for her anymore, except in small doses.

So she wanted to write a piece about how Led Zeppelin had reached critical mass in her life and how this saturation had driven her to confer upon the mighty Zep that most damning of honorifics: overrated.

Gasp. Shudder. The horror.

I gave Emily's idea an immediate thumbs up. I wanted a crack at writing the response, after all. Well, like I said, that was months ago. Time has run out, and I'm launching a preemptive strike, as it were (from what I understand, those always end well).

The Ghost of Zeppelin Present


This will not, despite all appearances, morph into a diatribe on why Led Zeppelin is incredible and Emily (or anyone else) is insane for believing otherwise. The truth is that Emily's proposed piece actually got me thinking. As I considered all that I might say in response to her claims of Zeppelin's limitations, I actually saw more legitimacy in them than I would have believed.

So I went back to the source. I threw on III (For those not prone to "getting the Led out," Zeppelin's first four albums were designated simply by Roman numerals) and tried to listen through the ears of someone who didn't once adore this music so intensely that it bordered on solipsism. This is an intensely difficult endeavor, as you might imagine. Thankfully for the sake of the experiment, the first track on III is "Immigrant Song," which, if I'm guessing, is probably in the top six Led Zeppelin tunes currently played on the radio. (The others are probably, in some order, "Stairway," "Kashmir," "Whole Lotta Love," "Heartbreaker," and either "Black Dog" or "Rock and Roll.") I've never thought of this song as one of Zep's best efforts, but then, I wouldn't consider any of the songs I've just listed among my personal Top Ten. I mean, they all have a seat at the bargaining table (except maybe "Kashmir," which has always seemed lacking), but after the initial shine wore off, they all settled far below my personal view of the band's apex.

I would wager that for a great many people—a majority of them like Emily, who has heard other Led Zeppelin, but for whom the radio hits have come to represent most of what the band is—these few songs have presented Zeppelin as a horribly repetitive group with little to recommend it beyond sheer bombast.

Now, none of this is to say Oh, if only the sad masses got to know the brilliance of Led Zeppelin's deep cuts, they'd be instant converts. That is condescending and doesn't really do much general Zeppelin discourse. I'm simply pointing out that, like a lot of bands, Zeppelin's most radio friendly songs don't really do the band justice. On III alone, after "Immigrant Song," we're treated to an acoustic folk-boogie ("Friends"), a slow-burning blues howler ("Since I've Been Loving You"), a sing-along pop gem ("Tangerine"), and a bluegrass-infused ramble ("Bron-Y-Aur Stomp"), mixed in among the straight-ahead rockers (and even then, "Celebration Day" and "Out on the Tiles" reflect the group's versatility and flair better than "Immigrant Song"). The point is, anybody who is repeatedly and almost exclusively bludgeoned with only the brawny heavyweights in Zeppelin's catalogue is bound to find them lacking.

The whole 'seeing the band through different eyes' thing didn't do much to change my perception of Led Zeppelin, but I can openly admit now what I may not have been able to before. Phil Tallon wrote a few weeks ago about Parks and Recreation, and how Amy Poehler's character on that show loves her hometown both in spite of and, in some cases, because of its flaws. That's how I feel about Led Zeppelin. I know that seven-minute drum solos on studio recordings are needlessly indulgent, but I love "Moby Dick" anyway. I know that it's hard to take a band seriously when no fewer than three of their songs feature overt references to The Lord of the Rings (even if you love The Lord of the Rings), but I don't care. Led Zeppelin hit me at a time in my life and in such a way that I don't know that anything could completely pry them out now. They're excessive and silly and self-serious and obnoxious, but I don't care.

The Ghost of Zeppelin Future


It may sound from all this like I'm still that sixteen-year-old kid with a stack of Zeppelin CDs in my passengers seat, all those albums still cycling through my stereo. But the truth is that until today, I hadn't listened to a whole Led Zeppelin album in a long time, maybe as long as a year. Writing this brought me back to them, and before I popped III into the CD player, I was a little worried that the magic would be gone. But I feel that way all the time about a bunch of my favorite things. I've often worried that I don't really like The Beatles as much as I claim, that I've just become complacent, that I've kept them atop my personal musical totem pole out of habit as much as for any other reason. I've done the same thing with the Star Wars films and The Lord of the Rings novels.

I become legitimately concerned about these things. And then the first chord hits, or I watch that yellow text crawling across space, or I read the first few lines, and I ready myself for a long-awaited party.

By Josh Corman

Follow me on Twitter @JoshACorman

It's the End of Summer As I Know It (and I Feel Fine)

By Josh Corman

Clever Alice Cooper Reference

Arne Duncan and President Obama plotting the destruction of summer.
Hilarious.

When I was a kid, I heard the old expression, credited to Ben Franklin, that you can count on just two things in this world: death and taxes. With all due respect to our most quotable founding father, I  disagreed from the moment I heard the quip. For most school-age children in this country, the concepts of both death and taxes are mere abstractions, their inevitability a distant, vague proposition. So if eight-year-old me had been allowed to amend Franklin's aphorism, I would have added to it something that I really did feel would happen every year like clockwork, something I felt was my God-given right as an American, something I would fight for, if it came to that. Death? Sure. Taxes? Fine. But the thing I could always count on? Summer vacation.

From early June through mid-August for every year of my public education, I was free. I played in the yard, watched or played baseball six hours a day (and organized, reorganized, and shelved baseball cards for another two—great practice for bookshelves or record collections), ate lunch whenever I wanted, went swimming, jumped on the trampoline, skipped stones (seriously), learned the game of golf, and read every book I could get my hands on, among about a hundred other things. It was wonderful, even when it was boring. Summer vacation was how I learned to be by myself, to find entertainment off the beaten path, to terrorize my little sister in inventive new ways. Without it, I'm sure I wouldn't be the person I am today (nor would my sister, for that matter, but her nightmares are down to two nights a week, tops).

Increasingly, though, the rumblings from those highest of higher-ups in education spell doom for the traditional summer vacation. Death and Taxes indeed.

Time on Our Hands


The first question to ask about the end of summer vacation is why? Why put an end to this most beloved of childhood rituals?

The answers from those dark, nefarious forces aiming to squelch everyone's good time are surprisingly persuasive. On the one hand, the discussion over America's global competition in the academic realm has taken center stage. Both President Obama and Arne Duncan, the Secretary of Education, have taken pains to point out the need for more globally competitive students as they outline proposals and policies. Chief among the president's suggestions has been lengthening the amount of time students spend in school, either by extending the school day or the school year. My knee-jerk reaction as a teacher (it would have been the same when I was a student) is to boo loudly and frequently, but if I'm honest, I know that my vitriol is primarily the result of selfishness. I like being done with work before 4:00 PM, and I love having summers off.

But if I look at the issue more objectively, that is, if I try to see the issue simply in terms of problems and solutions, it seems, initially at least, difficult to argue with a longer school day and a longer school year. Consider, as Malcolm Gladwell points out in his fantastic book Outliers, that students in many Asian and European countries spend about 250 days a year in school, compared to the average American student's 180-190. Kids in the U.S., especially those with long summer breaks, are shown routinely to retain fewer of the skills and less knowledge than those who have a shortened summer vacation. This is even more true for kids in lower socio-economic strata, because it's likely that they're not being read to or taken to museums or enrolled in summer camp programs that might help bridge some of the wide gap between school years.

Isn't it obvious that kids who spend 25% more time learning to master skills will be better at those skills (and potentially given more time in which to master them, meaning fewer rushed lessons and fewer kids being turned off math because they took longer to understand its underlying principles)? Isn't it clear that taking immense amounts of time without any sort of targeted instruction throws an enormous wrench into kids' ability to learn?

Of course it is. But you and I both know that it isn't the whole story, either.

What We Do With the Time That Is Given to Us


I graduated high school with somebody who went to MIT. One of my best friends is at NYU law school. Another friend has studied at Oxford. All of these people had lengthy summer vacations. They all engaged their minds in a variety of ways, looked for education in a broader sense, everywhere they could. The latter two goofed around a lot and spent a lot of time doing things that no sane person would consider intellectually beneficial. And yet, there they are, smart, decent human beings with a lot to offer the world.

I'm less concerned with asking the question, "But what would they have been able to accomplish with all that extra learning time?" than asking, "What would they have missed out on if they'd been cooped up in a classroom sixty-five extra days a year?" The reason the second question interests me more is that I think I know the answer to the first one, but I'm much less certain about the second. I would hope that they would have still developed some of the same extra-curricular interests and met the same friends and been able to use their time free from school to experience some of the incredibly formative moments of their youths, but I don't know if that's accurate.

Thinking about this makes me realize how delicate a balance the relationship is between structured learning time and those moments which are, at least on their surface, totally removed from intellectual or academic concerns. I would distrust anyone who said we didn't need both, but I have no idea what the exact balance between the two should look like.

Perhaps we can take a clue from Sir Ken Robinson, whose TED talks are among the most viewed in the website's history (his first one, titled "Schools Kill Creativity," is actually #1). Robinson points out that schools very often do a piss-poor job of adapting to the needs of students whose strengths lie outside of the traditional spectrum of academic subjects (math, science, languages, etc.). He claims that an alien looking down on Western education could only conclude that its purpose is to produce university professors. Think about the kids you went to school with. Who finished at the top of the class? What was most valued in those students by their teachers? Maybe you're like Emily, who in her post on creativity last week admitted that she had submerged her more creative instincts in the interest of more measurable academic skills. (She was class salutatorian, by the way.) How many kids are like her? How many aren't capable of succeeding in school like she did because their intelligence isn't as varied or adaptable as hers? How many feel like they aren't good at anything only because what they were good at wasn't valued by their schools? Robinson says it's this last thought that bothers him most.

And it should. Because when it comes to education reform, we assume that students should essentially be treated the same, that there's one way to define intelligence and that, therefore, the most practical answer to the question, "How do we make our schools better and our students stronger?" is to make the school day longer and shorten summer vacation, rather than question the value of what we're teaching them to be.

Maybe we will have to spend more time in school. But first, we should ask ourselves what the value of time outside of school is and see if we can't learn a little something from summer vacation that would apply nicely inside a classroom. What if we used those extra sixty-five days to let kids explore their passions and interests outside of the core content subjects? What if we acknowledged that just because kids are out of school, that doesn't mean that they aren't learning constantly, turning themselves into the types of people we want to succeed in our culture—not just because they're smart or they did well in school, but because they're assured of who they are, confident in what they do, and capable of a more rounded view of the world.

If we fill our schools with students like that, they will leave school and build a richer society once they're out in the world. I'd take that outcome, even if we still finish behind France in the TIMMS test, 'cause I bet we'd beat their asses in Calvinball.

On Creativity, Continued: Execution

By Jonny Walls

I've spent the last thirteen years in pursuit of a career in creativity. In high school and a few years beyond, it was music. For the last six years, it's been film.

On Wednesday, Emily posted an incredibly insightful piece about the importance of creativity. Creativity, she argues, belongs to everyone, even those, like herself, who grew up erroneously believing themselves uncreative. An important tenet of Emily's thesis is that creativity is often undervalued, sometimes to a startling degree, in our modern mindsets. I agree, and so propose we keep the creativity train rolling through the weekend.

Now What?

So you're fresh off Emily's rousing call to creative arms and have found your mind flooded with fresh ideas and memories of youthful schemes that went ever undone. You've discovered a new spring in your step that you forgot ever existed. You're floating on the winds of hope and rediscovered wonder.

Well I'm here to bring you back down.

Creativity isn't all excitement, fleeting images, and wild experimentation; it requires application as well. It's not enough to rediscover the slumbering bear of creativity hibernating in the wintery cave of our subconscious; we must brave the beast and wake it. (A decidedly uncreative analogy, yes, but deliciously ironic. Am I right?)

I've by no means been a paragon of creative success and innovation, but I have figured a few things out along the way.

Hold on there, Jackson...

Let's dispel a popular myth that creativity and organization are somehow dichotomous. Somewhere floating around is the notion that creatives are all free-spirited, wind riding forest sprites who could no more condescend to bother with good grammar than they could tidy their work spaces (not that they could ever be contained by any such conformist cubicles of oppression anyway.) Granted, every mind works differently, but it has been my discovery that organization is not only in harmony with creativity, it is a distinct aid unto it.

For me, anything from a messy work space to haphazard digital file management can act as a creativity suppressant. Even if only on a subconscious level, clutter is just one more thing to preoccupy our mind-power and weigh our creativity down. If I'm editing a film, I shouldn't be wondering where, out of five possible locations, one particular root file may be. I want to dedicate my concentration to the flow of the story and the rhythm of the piece. Knowing that every file is safe and cozy where it ought to be is downright liberating. Clear out the clutter, overthrow disorganization, and watch your creativity blossom, unhindered.

It's All Been Said More Effectively Before

In the last two years, not including all of my paying work, I have edited a now published book, co-written a travel memoir exceeding 100,000 words (three drafts), written a feature length screenplay (eight drafts), written twenty-seven blog entries, collaborated on a friend's graphic novel, performed all parts for and recorded a song, performed drums and contributed to arrangements for a friend's music project, written, directed and edited a short film, written three short stories, worked on numerous friends' projects and short films, am currently writing another feature length screenplay, am currently collaborating on a web series, and am in pre-production for another short film I wrote and will direct.

Oh, and I made a board game.

Yes, landing on Waffle House right out of the gate does earn you an extra turn.

Please understand, I'm not trying to impress you. (What a sad attempt it would be.) What I mean to point out is, I could have done more. I should have done more. I spent a lot of the last two years sitting on my ass, browsing the internet and wasting time. I spent more time staring at Facebook and espn.com than I did on all of those projects combined. Imagine what I may have accomplished if I had cut my wasted time in half.

I'm not the busiest person in the western hemisphere. There were times (extended times) when business was slow. But even when I was working every day, I would find time to get my own creative work done. If you are serious about uncorking your creativity, you have no excuses. You must sit down, clench your teeth, and do something. Talk can be good. It can help you organize your ideas, to flesh them out, but it only takes you a fraction of the way. We need tangible results here, people. Get it done. Write that story. Go to the store, buy the materials, clean out the garage, and start painting. Find someone with a camera and a Mac and shoot that short film. Do it.

Collaboration is Key

When I was slogging through a drastic revamp of my screenplay a few weeks ago, I hit a brick wall. I couldn't get through a certain obstacle, no matter how I tried. I wracked my brain and spent days, literally, in misery. Finally I called a friend. He already knew the basic story, so I talked him through the specific points of my issue, and he started throwing around ideas, and then I started throwing around ideas based on his ideas, and then new ideas were born out of a seed that his ideas planted in my mind, and then he began sprouting new ideas based on my new ideas, and then two of our ideas collided in mid-air and showered sparks and caught the couch on fire, and the next thing I knew I was picking ideas like fruit off of a tree (and treating my idea-burns). It was like a laser bouncing back and forth between two mirrors, gaining intensity by the moment. (I have no idea if that actually works.)

When I finish a screenplay, a story, a rough cut, anything, I don't pat myself on the back and congratulate myself on a job done. I send it to every willing person I know. I sit down with a group of seven or eight friends and read through my screenplays aloud. I let people watch rough cuts and hope they'll catch any awkward cuts that eluded my tired eyes. I tell them that I appreciate their praise, but what I really want is the criticism. There is simply no way to squeeze every bit of juice out of an idea with one pair of hands alone. A second pair will come in from a different angle and hit a fresh patch of that same fruit that you didn't even know was there.

You don't have to keep every idea. I certainly don't. Remember, it's your vision that in the end must be accomplished. Sometimes the ideas I'm given go straight in the trash. Sometimes they lead to separate ideas I keep. Sometimes I take the ideas outright and claim them as my own (the true secret to creative success), but I am always, always, better for it. Collaboration is the anvil upon which any and all singular visions can be molded to size and made perfect. No exceptions.

In Summary...

Creativity is part inspiration, part execution. As Emily pointed out, sometimes the inspiration bit is cast aside before it even has a chance to take root. But just as often, the seeds of inspiration are planted and left untended. Creativity doesn't just happen. While geniuses like Steinbeck and Wes Anderson and Van Gogh and Thom Yorke tend to make it seem effortless, it's an illusion. It's anything but.

Now go. Wake the bear.

By Jonny Walls

On Creativity

By Emily Walls

Imagine this: You are locked in a windowless room on the second story of a commercial building. You have with you a handful of binders, a legal pad, one (1) pen and one (1) green marker, several paperclips, a stapler, a Norman Rockwell calendar, and a desk. On that desk you have a computer, which is equipped with Word and Excel only. No Internet. No phone. No one else. How many hours do you think will go by before you begin composing a 29-stanza poem about a young girl who brutally murders a Microsoft icon?

For me, the answer was 114 hours.

When I was in the fourth grade, my teacher announced one day that the school would be offering an extra art class for those who showed particular giftedness in the visual arts. She passed out a small test—a single page with three simple shapes that we were to draw at double size—and explained that if we were interested in the class, we could submit our completed exams and wait for the results.

I was excited. I had never produced anything less than A material in all subjects, I was already participating in an accelerated school program, and I was motivated. Chance of rejection: zero.

So I gave up my recess that day to stay in and work on my test, painstakingly measuring each shape with a ruler and carefully copying the shapes at twice their sizes. I handed in my paper, confident that I would be accepted. A few days later, my teacher posted a paper with the names of accepted students, and I was horrified to discover that my name was not among them. I did not understand then what I know now: Art is not about rulers and grids.

I walked away from my fourth grade experience with new perspective on my place in the artistic community, and though I gained valuable humility and insight into the nature of art and creativity, I simultaneously bought into a profound fallacy that all creativity equals visual art. Since I was not good at drawing, I reasoned, I must essentially lack creativity. Add to that the further segregation of subjects in school and exposure to right-brain/left-brain concepts, and I became fully convinced that I simply was not a creative person. There were creatives and there were non-creatives, and I was the latter.

I built my education on this false premise, concentrating on subjects that could be measured, skills that could be calculated. I had a natural aptitude for writing, but I feared the demands of creative writing courses, so instead of majoring in English in college, I majored in business. I took finance and accounting courses and learned about target markets and interest rates.

And I was right about certain things. I am crazy good at whipping up spreadsheets. I have a talent for organizing ideas, and I can make order from chaos. I’m good at creating systems that make processes faster and smoother. Plus, I have great spatial reasoning, which comes in handy for packing cars on road trips.

Do you know what I suck at? Picking out two colors that look good together. Telling the difference between Arial and Helvetica. Knowing what “white space” is. Layering clothing.

I spent six years post college keeping myself in the lands of Reason, Logic, and Fact, because creativity was not for me. I worked several different jobs – some I liked, some I didn’t – and for one month of 2011, I took a temp position working in a windowless office on the second floor of a commercial building, my only companions a desk, a handful of office supplies, and Microsoft Word. One hundred fourteen working hours and 29 stanzas about murder later, I came to an important – no, essential – conclusion: Creativity belongs to everyone.

I was contracted to work forty hours per week in that position, but the job I was hired to do sometimes took me one hour per day to accomplish, and one time just seven minutes. I begged for more work from my supervisor and coworkers, but they told me there was nothing more for me to do and that I should go to my office and read for the rest of the day. Eyes can only take so much small print, so I spent an alarming number of hours staring at a blank wall. After a few of those hours, I was amazed to find my mind teeming with crazy ideas – comic strips, stories, poems, and the like. I built cities out of staples and file folders. I made origami Star Wars figures. I drew pictures (crude though they were) and made up characters. I wrote Verbal Infusion's first post with pen and paper at that desk.

I found that when you strip away the distractions, your mind will fill the void with your own unique thoughts, and your mind is alive and alight with creativity, even if you’re the kind of person who thinks Papyrus is the font of the future.

That temp job is long over, but I learned from it that I need to make time for reflection and doodling, that I need to intentionally seek inspiration. So I now set aside time to check out my friends' design work on The Fresh Exchange and A Pair of Pears. I watch TED Talks every now and then to see what brilliant people are doing in fields wildly different from my own. I take breaks from romantic comedies to watch movies that challenge me mentally and amaze me visually. And after I’ve done that, I sit quietly and think. And then I create.

Links to the Present - 4/24/12

We here at the Infusion are taking Tuesdays to share a little of what's caught our fancy over the preceding week. We call it "Links to the Present." Peruse our offerings and give the article titles a click.


A Point of View: In Defense of Obscure Words - BBC columnist Will Self derides the paucity of personages amenable to engaging with obstreperous parlance (the lack of people willing to read works that use difficult words).

Insane 'Tube Transport' Will Zip You From New York to L.A. in 45 Minutes - This brief animation lays out the general schematic for an energy-efficient travel system that could probably make your commute shorter than the time it takes for you to key your car's ignition.

Tolstoy or Dostoevsky: Eight Experts on Who's Greater - Tired of seeing endlessly reductive internet polls and rankings that unfairly simplify legitimately complex debates? Me neither! Seriously though, some heavy duty Russian scholars tackle the age old question while simultaneously giving me a hankering for Borscht and The Brothers Karamazov.

Five Things Alfred Hitchcock's Films Taught Me - On the lighter side, the British Film Institute's Heather Stewart (no relation to Jimmy, presumably) noted recently that Hitchcock might deserve to be on Britain's national curriculum alongside Shakespeare. Ann Billson contemplates what the Master of Suspense can teach us.

This is just horrible.  In another sector of "British film," this couple pays 750 pounds for what some are calling the worst wedding photos ever. As you will see they are...shockingly bad. According to this source for the same story, part of the reason for the blurry photos was a self-proclaimed "epileptic photographer" who couldn't safely use a flash. There is nothing funny about epilepsy, but maybe, just maybe, that guy is in the wrong business.

Swan Songs

By Josh Corman

What If?

What if John Lennon had been shot in 1969 rather than 1980? What if, just weeks before the release of Abbey Road, the most significant member of the most significant musical group in history had left this world? And what if, instead of leaving behind a fully recorded, mixed, and mastered piece of visionary art, John had struggled to finish some of his compositions. What if only half the vocals had been laid down, or what if he had never quite been satisfied with the guitar on "Come Together?" What would the rest of the group have done? What would the release day for Abbey Road have looked like if fans knew, beyond any doubt, that the last glimpse into John Lennon's genius, moving full steam ahead, would come on October 1st, 1969, and that it really didn't look like what he would have wanted out there?

What a shame it would have been, obviously. It's sad enough when a towering creative figure dies at the end of a long, productive life and career, or even when they die young, but with their best creative days likely behind them. But when a Kurt Cobain or James Dean goes, right at what should be the apex of what they've striven to give the world? We listen to that last record or watch that last film, and we search for something, some flicker of the promise we know we've lost, and it comforts and pains us all at the same time.

The Pedestal

The most fascinating novel ever written about taxes and accounting.

For a number of reasons, I looked forward with near unhinged madness to this year's Spring Break. Besides all the usual perks of a work-free week, I had been saving something very important: David Foster Wallace's final novel, The Pale King. The combination of wild anticipation and anxiousness with which I had looked forward to reading Wallace's final work (he committed suicide in 2008 after a long, troubled battle with depression and addiction) was something that I hadn't experienced since reading the final Harry Potter novel in 2007. In that case, I was only anxious because I wanted so badly to love the story and discover the answers to questions I'd been asking for years. The Pale King brought with it a different layer of emotion. This was the last time I would read a novel by one of my three favorite writers of all time, and knowing you're losing a character doesn't feel nearly as bad as losing an author. I had devoured Wallace's previous two novels, The Broom of the System and Infinite Jest, near the beginning of last year and read one of his two nonfiction collections, Consider the Lobster, the previous Christmas. In the time between reading those works and opening The Pale King, I had watched approximately ten hours of interviews with Wallace, read his Kenyon College Commencement speech, "This is Water," probably fifteen times, and gobbled up every interview, profile, and review I could find written about the man or his work.

This is dangerous behavior. I'd put DFW on a pedestal. Rarely, if ever, does anything good come from putting a writer, musician, actor, or sports star on a pedestal. Creating hopelessly high expectations (especially for a dead person) leads mostly to deflation and letdown because of the narrow pathway it leaves for our idols to tread. Take Cobain as an example (my Verbal Infusion contract requires me to make mention of Nirvana or Kurt Cobain no fewer than twenty times per year; I'm trying to add a few tallies to that ledger). When In Utero came out, a lot of people were disappointed with the record's raw sound, but that disappointment didn't really stem from the quality of In Utero. Rather, it was that In Utero didn't sound enough like Nevermind for many fans' tastes. They had created a Platonic version of Nirvana in their minds, and when In Utero didn't mesh with that narrow conception of what the band should be, they reacted unkindly. History has a way of salving the sting in most instances like this (and it certainly has for Nirvana's second album), but time and again the pedestal effect plays itself out.

And so, having placed The Pale King on a pedestal next to its author, setting aside a week to read it during which I would have plenty of time and focus to spare and essentially creating an environment in which the book could do little but disappoint me, I finally read the thing.

Man, did it hurt. The Pale King is funny, poignant, and philosophical, and it shows flashes of brilliance that even Steinbeck can't match for their harrowing, pummeling pathos. And now, 560 pages later, it's all gone. I knew this ache would come. The effect of feeling, for real, that I would never get to engage with this voice (in this form, at least; Wallace has short fiction collections and one more nonfiction collection that I'm working hard to create pedestals for) in a fresh way again. It doesn't feel like regret, exactly, but it stings in kind of the same way.

The Afterglow


One of the hardest feelings for me to describe to people is that of having just finished a book that you know is going to stick with you for a long time. The words are simultaneously buzzing around in my head, striving to leave a singular impression and quickly fading from memory. What's left is usually just a holistic impression that feels unworthy of the massive effort that you know went into what's been read.

My immediate holistic verdict was one of gratitude and awe. Gratitude because when Wallace died, his editor put a tremendous amount of work into marrying the three hundred or so neatly typed pages that represented the most complete part of The Pale King and then cobbling the rest of it together using found notes, rough drafts, and computer files. The result is, as the cover indicates, unfinished, a word that only adds to the ache I mentioned earlier. The awe I felt wasn't new. The way guitar players are in awe of Hendrix or Morello, poets in awe of Whitman or Eliot, actors in awe of Brando or Lewis, that's the feeling even two or three consecutive DFW sentences make me feel. The fear that "unfinished" meant "lacking quality" vanished pretty quickly. The Pale King met the immense challenge I had set for it, but it made me wonder about what will come next.

David Foster Wallace is my John Lennon (even though John Lennon is also my John Lennon, he was dead five years before I was born, so it doesn't work the same way), my Kurt Cobain, my James Dean. He left behind a few thousand pages, and as I've worked through them, I've thought about this end point often. The way I see it, I've got one of two choices: I can convince myself that finishing Wallace's last novel is tantamount to losing a best friend, develop an unhealthy literary solipsism where I see everything through the DFW lens, thereby ensuring that I hate ninety-five percent of what I read because it doesn't measure up, or I can acknowledge that it's been a hell of a ride, that my twelve pound copy of Infinite Jest isn't going anywhere, and that Wallace will always be there, waiting to be reread and rooting for me to find something that's just as great as he was. Instead of being bummed or even afraid because I've read his every word, I should just appreciate what he gave me and move on.

That second choice is really the only choice for us, if we want to enjoy our favorite pastimes, but I don't know if it's the one we choose most often. If you saw the story in the news about the Tupac Shakur hologram closing out Dr. Dre's set at the Coachella music festival last weekend, you might understand what I mean. Tupac was a titan of his field, to be sure, and for much of the last seventeen years, a lot of hip-hop fans have been hung up on what his loss meant, and what his death cost in terms of his art. It's a callous way to approach the loss of a life, but when we lose an artist, it's hard not to think about their work first, because it's really the only connection we have to them.

The concept of a rapping Tupac hologram is weird, but it's also frightening. Dr. Dre, the man who dreamed up the idea, has said that this is only the beginning for this technology and that there are plans to send the hologram on tour. How long do you think it took for someone to call Yoko Ono's or Courtney Love's agents and pitch the idea of a Beatles or Nirvana reunion. I can only pray that neither one of them would have the audacity to give such a plan the thumb's up, but until I hear a definitive "no," I'm going to be a little nervous. But there are those who might get excited at the prospect. I am afraid of these people.

See, I don't want to be somebody who can't let go. I won't ever read a new David Foster Wallace novel or listen to a new Beatles record or see a new Heath Ledger movie, and I need to be okay with that. Increasingly, I think I am.

By Josh Corman

Follow me on Twitter @JoshACorman

Why the Hell Not? An Epistemolgical Exploration with Blade II

By Jonny Walls

A hypothetical question: What if I came home one day and declared to my wife that "Blade II is my favorite movie"? Would she think I had become crazy? Probably not. After all, having Blade II as one's favorite movie is not a crazy thing to do. But then again, my wife knows me, and she knows that Blade II is not my favorite movie, and could never be. At least, the "me" that she really knows, or thinks she knows, would never choose Blade II as his favorite film. It's simply not in his (that is to say, "my") character.

She would assume I was joking. Besides, I've never even seen Blade II.

But what if I insisted, without a hint of twinkle or jest in my eyes, that Blade II had indeed, for no apparent reason, ascended to the throne of my personal movie kingdom? What if I became angry and rude when she refused to believe me? What if I spoke of nothing for the rest of the day, but my adoration for Blade II. Let's say she knows that I haven't taken drugs, I haven't suffered brain injury, that I am functioning completely normally in every other way imaginable.

My wife knows I like to joke, and she knows I've never even seen Blade II. Pure logic would lead her, once again, to believe that it was a prank. But then again, she knows that a joke of this nature, carried on without a trace of irony for that long, is also out of my character.

But what if she came home next day to find our apartment walls covered with Blade II posters? What if, in the backyard, she found the charred remains of Coppolla's Bramstoker's Dracula DVD, all of the Underworld DVD's, and the Twilight DVD's? What if, that evening at dinner, I built a to-scale replica of Wesley Snipes out of mashed potatoes? What if I became grumpy and left the table to sulk in my room when she criticized my poor craftsmanship and told me that the real Wesley would be embarrassed by this sad attempt at starchy immortalizing?

You see where I'm going with this? At what point does my wife dismiss what she thought she absolutely knew and instead accept a new paradigm of reality?

What if she opened up our DVD case, expecting to find It Happened One Night among our diverse DVD collection, only to find hundreds of copies of Blade II, and nothing else? What if I legally changed my name to Blade?

Movie characters are constantly faced with improbable situations and often react with stubborn disbelief. Think of Neo in the Matrix, or Demi Moore in Ghost. I constantly find myself on the side of truth, wondering how the unbelieving protagonists could be so mulish in the face of such compelling evidence.

"Ditto, Demi! Ditto!"

I often envision myself in their position, accepting the truth with the enlightened wisdom that only an outsider watcher in a theater can attain. But maybe, if the tables were turned, it would take just as much convincing and time in denial for me as it does for them.

Capable of Kidnapping?

Recently Emily and I were visiting my Dad in San Francisco, who had flown in for a conference, and the three of us spent the day with our good friend (and Verbal Infusion guest poster) Phil Tallon. Phil was staying with his dad, who lives about thirty minutes outside of the city, so we gave him a ride to his pop's before heading back to L.A. at the end of the night. As I am wont to do, I blindsided Phil with the following hypothetical: What if I sped past your exit and started driving south toward L.A? At what point would you actually start to be afraid, or at least think something was seriously amiss?

It turns out Phil is a tough nut to crack. He simply refused to admit that he would ever believe me capable of true malice or danger. He would not accept that I could somehow not be the person he's known for years.

We upped the stakes.

"What if you started asking questions and telling us we missed the exit, and asked us repeatedly to turn around, and we all ignored you. No explanation, no interaction or acknowledgement of your presence, just silence, all the way to L.A?"

"I would assume it was an elaborate and well planned prank."

"But you have important things to do tomorrow: meetings, flights to catch soon, daughters and a wife waiting back home. What kind of person would do that to someone in your position?"

"I would consider it a highly inconsiderate, elaborate prank."

"What if I actually cut you with a knife?"

"Are you going to cut me with a knife?"

"No."

"Exactly. It's not in your character."

It was my assumption that a stunt like this would at least cause bewilderment, if not fear. But Phil insists that he would stick to his guns of hard knowledge. He knows what he knows, and anything in seeming disharmony with hard truth must be made to fall in line, one way or another.

The Drive-Thru Splasher Strikes Again

When I was in high school, I had a friend who would go to drive-thru windows, order a water, take the water from the employee's hands, yank off the top, splash the water into the employee's face, and then drive away laughing. I never did this myself, but I certainly never stopped him, and I laughed every time I was in the passenger seat.

I am aware that this was a cruel thing to do, but it did open one little window onto a special corner of life that goes oft unnoticed. At first it was hard to pin down exactly what it was, but as I thought on it more, I figured it out. When that water would hit those poor, underpaid employees' faces, we would witness a moment of true shock, of true humanity. Every layer of presupposition, every mask and ego, would drip away in that one instant of wide-eyed bewilderment. We would catch these people truly unaware. We were doing something they absolutely never expected, and it was kind of amazing. Those tiny glimpses are rare, and they're usually all we get of bare, untainted humanity, but they're worth catching.

Rare though they may be, those stripped, uncorrupted humans are still down there somewhere in every person, under the layers of expectation and habit and game-faces and work personas and social norms. Those people down there wouldn't have trouble accepting anything, if the evidence pointed that way.

Sometimes, even often, our knowledge and deductive skills lead us correctly. A well placed axiom serves as a fine barrier between ourselves and some truly slippery slopes. It's not about killing the idea of knowledge, but rather, opening the door for it. Somewhere along the line, we tend to lose the ability to expect wonder. To expect surprise. To expect miracles. To let them in.

There is an infinite universe that can't be comprehended, so would it really be that shocking if Blade II became my favorite film? No, it wouldn't.

But still, not gonna happen.

By Jonny Walls