"Und leider auch Theologie[...]"

Hunter S Thompson once remarked that he thought he could've enjoyed being a full-time sportswriter, but that before he took up that line of work he would've had to put a big hatpin through his frontal lobes, and then get a thesaurus, to make sure he didn't use the same adjective a dozen times in the same paragraph.

It may surprise you to know that I have daydreamed about becoming a pastor or priest. I'd have to perform the do-it-yourself hatpin-lobotomy first, of course, like Thompson before the switch to sportswriting that never was.

The title of this blog entry is from Goethe's Faust which is not only the most highly critically regarded piece of German literature, but also to this day the most-seen play on German stages, with hundreds of productions in an average year. It means "And unfortunately theology, too." Faust is sitting in his study at the beginning of the play, complaining that he's enegetically studied philosophy, law and medicine, "und leider auch Theologie." He goes on, "Da steh ich nun, ich armer Tor!/ Und bin so klug als wie zuvor." My translation: "Here I stand, a poor cuss!/No more clever than I ever wuz." Soon after that he swears he would sell his soul for some real wisdom, and the Devil appears and sez Okay then! and the fun begins. It's a great play. A lot of Germans dislike it because unfortunately they were forced to study it as children, just as many people in English-speaking schools are taught to hate Shakespeare.

Another very popular quote by Goethe, to judge by the number of Google hits it generates, is "Die Geschichte des guten Jesus habe ich nun so satt, dass ich sie von keinem, außer von ihm selbst, hören möchte." My translation: "I'm so tired of the story of sweet Jesus, I don't want to hear it again unless He tells it to me personally." (The originals are a lot better. Goethe was a great poet. I'm not.) Do I ever know how Goethe felt! Hence the aforementioned need for a do-it-yourself hatpin lobotomy.

Today I read a blog post by a very sincere young thing who's all excited about a project to "discover the words of Jesus" by studying Aramaic. The thinking goes that the Gospels were originally written in Aramaic. Never mind that the consensus of scholars is that the Greek versions we have are the originals. Never mind the well-known principle of something always being lost in translation. Never mind those incomprehensible owner's manuels which illustrate the perils of multiple tranlations of the same text. "News Radio" did an episode about this sort of thing: "I have skills. Monkey-strong skills.") Never mind that there have already been Aramaic translations of the Bible, going back to the days when people still spoke Aramaic! Never mind, never mind! Being religious means never having to make sense! Maybe it's this freedom which draws me to it.

Corrections

I was talking with some people about Dan Brownlately, and it occurred to me that I might want to correct a few misconceptions he's spread.

*sigh* I know: around 600,000,000 people eagerly read everything Brown publishes, and as little as 5 or 10 may read this blog post, and as many as 4 to 8 or so of them may already be way ahead of me. Still. It ain't right, what he's doin'!

The Priory of Sion

In The Da Vinci Code,which, as Brown strenuously asserts whenever it suits him, is after all only a work of fiction, after the Acknowledgments and before the Prologue, on a page carrying the bold capitalized headline FACT: Brown states that the Priory of Sion was founded in 1099 and that its member included da Vinci, Newton and Victor Hugo.

In fact, the Priory was established in 1956, established and then described as being centuries old, by a man named Pierre Plantard, as part of his attempt to pass himself off as a descendent of the Merovingians, and therefore, he alleged, a descendant of Jesus and Mary Magdalene.

The Merovingians

Okay, this one is not so much a matter of fact as a matter of WTF. Why would someone choose precisely that dynasty, as their ancestors and as the descendants of Jesus? Why, that is, unless they had not heard the prevailing description of the Merovingians, taught in countless Intro to Western Civ classes, namely that they were horrible, disgusting, shockingly evil people, personally responsible for much of the Darkness in the Dark Ages?

However...

...the prevailing, horrifying picture of the Merovingians comes mostly from one contemporary author, Gregory of Tours. And while I know of no particular reason to assail Gregory's reliability as an historian, historical spin was by no means unknown to ages before our own, and it is possible that our main historical source for the Dark Ages had some personal or professional feud with the Merovingians.

Now, regarding the idea that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were a couple and had a child...

...I couldn't care less if this is true or not. Nor do I have any particular reason either to support this theory nor to throw doubt upon it. I got nothin'. Sorry, you'll have to look elsewhere for help on this one.

Concerning the Grail, however, which according to Brown and to Michael Baigent, Henry Lincoln, and Richard Leigh,who gave Brown the idea, was the bloodline of Christ:

The Grail was first mentioned in the late 12th century in the epic poem on Percival by Chrétien de Troyes. If you attempt to establish the existence of the very notion of something called the Holy Grail earlier than Chrétien, then, I am sorry, my fellow scholar, but you must do so without my support. It's fictional, and it's mostly likely either a fictional chalice or a fictional stone, sought by the fictional knights of the fictionalized King Arthur's fictional Round Table.

But, but, the History Channel...

I know. I may write posts in the future similar to this one, dealing with stuff put out there by the History Channel.

So why d'ya watch the History Channel if you think it stinks so bad?

Because I'm weak. Often the subjects they cover are interesting to me, even if the treatment of these subjects tends to be excruciating, and they show lots of pictures of pretty paintings and medieval illuminations.

Agnes Martin

In the documentary Agnes Martin: With My Back to the World, Martin describes how her childhood hometown in Saskatchewan was located on a prairie so flat that you could watch a train approach the town, or leave the town, for hours. I'm trying to understand the effect she said she wanted her paintings to have, the effect others say they get from the paintings: a feeling of happiness, peaceful happiness. I certainly felt that when listening to her talk in the documentary, filmed toward the end of her life, when she was around 90 years old, I felt very soothed indeed -- but I look at her paintings, and I just think, "Whaaaat...?" Honestly, all I feel is puzzled. But I am looking for clues. Over and over again in the course of my life, I have looked at the work of an artist whom others have highly praised, and the objects of art in question have held no appeal for me -- until I've looked at them for a while, and then they have. No luck so far with Agnes Martin's paintings -- but maybe that prairie train-track is an important clue to the mystery of all of those paintings with horizontal stripes in pale earth-tones. Maybe they signified for Martin, subconsciously or however, the prairie horizon, the horizontal stripe of that train track, the colors of the land, fields sun-bleached in summer.

Maybe I'm starting to get it now about Martin's paintings. Right now, as I write this, looking at a picture of Martin's painting Happy Holidays in another window, on the website of the National Galleries of Scotland.

I don't know. I've never taken this approach before, examining an artist's biography or his or her statements for help in understanding his or her work. On the contrary, in fact, sometimes I have deliberately ignored what an artist had to say about his own work, as in the cases of Martin's fellow Abstract Expressionists Pollock and Rothko, both very gloomy fellows. I don't tend to feel gloomy at all when I look at a Pollock or a Rothko, on the contrary. If my reactions are "wrong," I don't really care, I'd rather feel exhilarated than depressed. I can do depressed all on my own, I don't tend to need much help there.

When it comes to exhilaration, joy, calm and the like, however, I will gladly take all the help I can get. Then again, if I find very different things in the work of Rothko and Pollock than what is usually described as their effects, if some critics would describe my reactions as "wrong," who's to say that looking for happiness in Martin's paintings might not be a futile quest for me?

I'm looking at Happy Holidays again in the other browser window, and... naaah, I don't really get it yet. Although I do now like the pictures made by Martin's former roommate Ellsworth Kelly. I've been discussing art with some people, and in the last few days Kelly's name came up -- that's why I started thinking about Martin again, I knew they and others had once shared a living and working space -- and I kept looking at Kelly's stuff, and, suddenly, as has happened with so many other artists before, bingo, I got it -- or if not "it," then I got something at least, something I wasn't getting before. Something quite nice, something I'm very glad I have.

As with Ellsworth Kelly, so with many other artists. Although some, like Martin, remain thoroughly enigmatic to me, I feel I am becoming more and more receptive to the beauty of art in generally -- more open, more... I can't think of a more accurate word here than "open."

21. May 2015: I'm finally starting to get it! The powerful soothing effect in her voice which I mentioned -- her paintings have it too! You just have to be open to it.

Reports of Detroit's Death Have Been Greatly Exaggerated

It's still there. Really. Specifically, Julien Temple's recent essay on the "last days of Detroit" is -- well, pretty silly. Temple published the essay in connection with his recent documentary, Requiem for Detroit, which the essay does not put me in the mood to see. Temple describes certain parts of town where the police will not bother you as long as you haven't murdered anyone. What nonsense. It's a distillation of some stereotypical attitudes toward "urban jungles" held by people who only visit them as tourists.

Toward the end of his essay Temple mentions a few hardy souls who, to his great surprise, in spite of everything, are determined to stick around and make it work.

To be greatly surprised that Detroit is not actually emptying out, that not everyone is leaving who can -- not to mention the few people *gasp!* moving there -- I don't recall Temple having mentioned any of the latter -- ah say ah say to be greatly surprised here, one must be pretty ignorant not only about Detroit specifically, but also about the way cities work in general, not to mention about some pretty universal constants in human habits and behavior. Julien Temple has lived on this planet for over 56 years, and has worked in the UK, in Los Angeles and New York and other cities as well, now including Detroit. One would've thought that as a movie director he would have had his eyes open at least part of that time. Maybe not. Let me run it down for Julien:

Cities rise and fall, prosper and go through hard times, in cycles. In times of higher unemployment and the various problems which are a part of decreased prosperity, people do tend to leave cities, to seek their fortunes elsewhere. But others tend to move in in their stead. Abandoned industrial districts become gentrified. Other sorts of industry spring up. But apart from the yuppies and speculators, there are also the stubborn natives, exemplified by Gabby Johnson in Blazing Saddles who put it in this very memorable way:

"Hell, I was born here, and I was raised here, and goddamn it, I'm a-gonna die here! And no sidewindin', bushwhackin', hornswogglin' cracker croaker is gonna ruin my biscuit-cutter! Rahruhruh!"

These Gabbys are everywhere, and their grim determination to by God stay everywhere they are, combined with the entreprenurial spirit of those who move into and renovate the places left by the discouraged, and with the application of governmental grant money, and with the influx of people just looking for plain old cheap rent and small mortgages, turn urban jungles into boomtowns: in Temple's hometown of London, and in New York, to name a couple of recent examples, and in Cleveland, to name another close enough to Detroit that plenty of Detroiters have easily been able to observe how it's done.

Again: what on Earth has Julien been observing? (Not economic cycles, one presumes.) Requiem? The mind boggles.

The Plug, the Beards, the Dreams

I wonder to what extent Martin Scorsese works with exactly the people he wants to work with. I can't imagine a lot of people hearing that Scorsese wants them to work on one of his movies, and saying, "No, thanks."

Except, of course, for those pesky people who actually come up with the money to make the movies. The plug got pulled on The Last Temptation of Christ twice. Originally shooting was scheduled to begin after The King of Comedy was done, in Israel, with a huge budget, huge sets, great crowds of extras playing Roman soldiers and so forth. Robert De Niro was going to play Jesus -- of course. De Niro as Jesus, Harvey Keitel as Judas, anothor DeNiro/Keitel/Scorsese joint, perfect. But the financiers got nervous because it was "controversial," and they pulled out. The beard De Niro is wearing in The Mission:

and in Angel Heart is the one he originally grew to play Jesus.

Then the Last Temptation of Christ project was started up again, after Scorsese had made After Hours. Aidan Quinn was going to be Jesus this time, he had the long beard rockin and was all set, but again, Lo, the balls of the money people did shrivel and they were sore afraid, and the project was canceled again, and Scorsese made The Color of Money instead. The version Scorsese finally made, with Willem Dafoe as Jesus, was shot in Morocco on a very tight budget. (For example, there are only five people playing Roman soldiers in the whole movie.)

Imagine if the original big-budget De Niro version had been made. Not counting the documentary The Last Waltz, that would've made six Scorsese movies in a row with De Niro in them, five in a row with De Niro in the lead role, and three, after Mean Streets and Taxi Driver, with both De Niro and Keitel.

Imagine what might have been. Maybe Scorsese and De Niro and Keitel would've kept working together constantly. As it is, since the first Temptation project fell apart, Scorsese and De Niro only worked together twice, on Goodfellas and Casino, and the only Scorsese picture Keitel has been in is Last Temptation.

Imagine if De Niro had never made any of those crappy movies he's made with other directors.

That's showbiz. All sorts of exciting projects never get off of the ground. Welles couldn't make Heart of Darkness, so he made Citizen Kane instead. And what's up with Scorsese's Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, with Leonardo Di Caprio as TR, is this being made or is it just a rumor?

I Don't Know Why They Made This Commercial

Well, maybe I do. But if I understand what's going on here it's depressing as hell.

It's a recent American Airlines commercial, with a tall basketball player named Milos and his scrappy little agent who seems to be relentlessly lying his ass off, all around the world: "Milos only wants to play for Dallas." "Milos really wants to play for Brussells." "Milos only wants to play for Buenos Ares." "Milos only wants to play for blabbity-blabbity." "Milos really wants to play for hamana hamana." "Milos only wants to play for yip yip yip." And so forth. It seems obvious that Milos is not very sought-after, but his agent relentlessly presents him to different teams as if he were. And then at the end a voice-over sonorously intones: "We know why you fly."

Why exactly does this agent fly? And more to the point, why does American Airlines think that its potential customers want to fly alongside people like him? Because they like compulsive liars? Because they, too, are salespeople who are desperately misrepresenting their wares all over the world? Is there a great fraternity of lying, hustling weasels out there, flying all over the world on American Airlines?

I'm afraid that there just may be. Maybe somebody at the ad agency said, "You know, we've being doing really well for a long time with these slick and completely unrealistic ads. All these ads about nothing, which just set a mood and flatter businesspeople, with a lot of slow-mo of very good-looking actors portraying businesspeople in great suits staring sagely into glorious sunsets from luxury-hotel balconies and earnestly shaking hands in luxurious boardrooms with urban skyline views and opening very expensive-looking briefcases and wearing hard-hats with the sleeves of their dress shirts rolled up while they point at blueprints and relaxing in huge first-class seats and so forth, without giving the viewer any hint of what they're really doing. But maybe all those down-the-heel desperate Willie Lomans out there peddling crap to each other -- you know: our actual target demographic -- would appreciate a commercial that shows them as they actually are, doing what they actually do: wearing desperate smiles and desperately lying for a living. Let's make it a sports agent, to jazz it up a little. We don't want to get too real, showing a lying office-goods salesman whose desperate smile is wearing thin after twenty lean years; that might be a little too depressing. I know: a short sports agent with a tall basketball player who can't even throw a paper wad into a conference-room wastebasket while the little agent is trying his best to BS some team's board of directors. Kinda real, but cute and funny."

We Know Why You Fly: Because BS And Fear Make the World Go Round.

Claire Danes as Temple Grandin

I saw Temple Grandin on HBO last night, and loved it. Especially Claire Danes in the title role, based upon the real-life figure of Temple Grandin, an autistic woman who is currently a professor at Colorado State University specializing in animal behavior, and who has designed pens and buildings for livestock which have made the treatment of cattle more humane, as well as a "hug machine," based on chutes used to hold cattle still while they're being inoculated, which many autistics have found to be a great help in calming down and gathering their wits when they become agitated. This has to be the best movie portrayal of an autistic person by a non-autistic actor since Rain Man. (A couple of amusing pieces of trivia about Rain Man: 1) When he was getting ready to play Rain Man, Dustin Hoffman consulted -- ta da! -- Temple Grandin; 2) The man upon whom Rain Man was based isn't actually autistic.) This movie is all about Claire Danes, it's built very much around her, portraying Grandin mostly in her high-school and college years, and man oh man does she ever hit a home run. David Strathairn is good as a science teacher who was a huge help in Grandin's life, being one of the first to sense the dimensions of genius under her strange exterior, but he and the other supporting players don't have much to do but react to Danes. If I had to criticize something in the movie, I'd say that the other actors besides Danes could've been given more to do, their characters could've been more complex. You know -- with lives of their own, with at least an occasional glimpse into their own ups and downs and problems and triumphs and all. Despite that one reservation, props to Christopher Monger for a great screenplay, and to Mick Jackson, the director. (I can't believe one and the same man directed this and The Bodyguard. "And Iiiiiii, will always looove yooooooouuu-HOOOOOO!!!!" Yes, THAT Bodyguard.) The scenes showing how Grandin "thinks in pictures" and the graphics suggesting the high-speed calculations going on in her head are great. Alex Wurman's music is really wonderful in spots, recalling, in its calmer moments, the work of Philip Glass, although, ironically, over the end credits, which feature pictures of the real Temple Grandin, the music became much more busy and effusive, and gave this autistic a bad case of sensory overload. But mostly, it's Ms Danes. Wow. So good. You immediately forget that you're watching a glamorous movie star, and instead you see a very awkward and skittish, profoundly autistic young woman who is constantly misunderstood by other people and is constantly misunderstanding them, and has problems with all sorts of things which don't bother most people at all. The automatic sliding glass doors at a grocery store completely overwhelm her, for example, so she gives up trying to go through them and shops at a little store across the street instead. The squeaking of a felt-tipped pen on paper annoys and distracts her to the point that she cannot follow a conversation. The maid at her aunt's ranch accidentally knocks the sign that says "Temple Grandin's room" off of the door to her bedroom, and this sends her into a meltdown. (I don't know how it happened in real life, but in the movie, when Danes/Drandin sees that the sign has been knocked off of the door, she runs outside to the cattle inoculation chute, climbs inside, screams for help, and asks her aunt, who comes running, to press her tightly inside the chute, and so the "hug machine" is born.) (Not all autistics are always bothered by being hugged. I just thought I should mention that. If the autistic person is verbally functional, you could ask instead of assuming that a hug isn't wanted. It's possible that an autistic kid would just love a good hug but is too shy to point out that your assumption that he or she doesn't want to be hugged is wrong in his or her case. Also, one and the same autistic person may like having you hug them at one time and not want to be touched at all at another time, without there necessarily being the slightest reason for you to take it personally. I'm just sayin'.) The sliding doors and the felt-tipped pen and the sign are good examples of the kinds of things we autistics struggle with constantly, good examples of the reasons why from time to time we behave in ways which most people find very strange, and Danes, to this autistic, and also to more neurologically-typical folks, to judge from the reviews, conveys this struggle very convincingly. Danes is brilliant portraying Grandin, and the Temple Grandin she portrays brilliantly, courageously, tenaciously overcomes the obstacles in her path and expresses her special gifts, to the great benefit of cattle and the livestock industry, and to the great benefit of autistics, showing us and showing the world the sorts of things that we can do. We're not all geniuses like her, we don't all have photographic memory like her, we're not all good at building things with our hands like her, but like her, we see and hear and feel the world differently than most people, and, although this definitely causes difficulties, it always has its good side too. Don't assume we want to be "cured." I'm sure most of us would love to be better understood. Most of us are constantly struggling to better understand most of you.