Analysis/Emotion

1 November 2006

Arsenal 0-0 CSKA Moscow (Champions League)

What a fascinating game this must have been. I don't think I watched it, a rare feat considering I watch almost all of Arsenal's games at this point (early-round Carling Cup matches excluded, of course). But I got wind of the score somehow and decided to leave it to the history books because I could find a better use for my time than a frustrating 90 minutes of scoreless football. It reminds me of a comment made on a short-lived (cut down in its youth!) television show: "because we've got soccer highlights, the sheer pointlessness of a zero-zero tie." Nil-nil draw would have been apropos, but an American audience would not have understood. Such is the point of this blog, right? Go on and roll your eyes. No one interested in soccer, or Arsenal, bothers to read this because I don't have any relevant news and I talk about matches from three months ago. Whatever, man! And now it's time to talk about writing. Why?, you moan, and I answer with not just a touch of ruthlessness that, well, it's what I do. I mentioned a couple weeks ago that I was not very pleased with how Alcova was turning out. Now that I'm approaching the two-month mark (somewhere around 45 pages of material), I find myself at least somewhat more pleased with the results. I realized that, if not an utterly fascinating story (which I still blame on the structure rather than the content), it has at least helped me hone my writing, an unexpected goal that has granted me something I could have only really dreamed of finding: my own particular writing style. For a long time, especially when I was in writing classes, I often bemoaned (to myself, of course) the fact that my writing, while perhaps good was not entirely unique or identifiable without my name attached. I had strong details, I could write dialogue with the best of them, and my stories were always entertaining: but I want something more than that, I want to stand out, that's how you get noticed, you get noticed by being interesting, not boring. But in college I never wrote much beyond what was demanded of me. A depressing reality, now that I have less time but more drive to write. So whatever style I might have or might cultivate was lost in the mix, thrown in a basket with the trash on top of it. As Alcova has progressed, as I have written on a much more regular basis, a distinctive style has emerged. That isn't the end of the maturation; I find myself much more cognizant of word choice and grammar. There is still a lot of room for growth, but sometimes it jumps out of me now that I've used the word "simply" five times in about two pages worth of writing: a disease I've had for too long unfortunately, but maybe I've finally found the antidote. Writing frequently does seem to make one a better writer. Shocking developments I'm revealing, I know, but please, it's for the good of all mankind. The style that has unfolded is a charming blend, I think, of post-modern physical detachment (that is, a disconnected realism, sort of existentialist but with a focus on social constructionism) and psychological deconstruction. That is to say, I explore both the hopeless physical interactions between humans on their primary level, and I explore the individual, internal reality that people subject themselves to. So one paragraph will describe, in basic enough terms, a journey somewhere. It will discuss the dirt on the road and the clouds in the sky, how far away the town is and what the protagonist aims to achieve. The next paragraph would maybe delve into the protagonist to get a feeling, a true feeling, of being him on that path: why do I walk everywhere, can't there be a faster way of traveling, by horse maybe, or car, haven't they invented cars yet, this walking is killing me, killing me, my feet fell off two miles ago and I am walking on stubs and this walking is killing me. I don't know, it's hard to get the way I say it in my head. Which is a problem, I understand. I think it's kind of like reading poetry though, all you really have to guide yourself off is the punctuation and tone within the piece. I like writing like that, because it helps me get in the head of the character, but also because it's more complex: I have shed modernist details for inner monologue, a monologue which explores emotion to its most obsessive and unending (except in death) degrees. It's almost stream of consciousness, and to some degree it is, but I think the way I write it at least tries to be more poetic than the standard stream of consciousness. Furthermore, it slips into the monologue and out at will, thus shifting the voice of the narrator from first person to third person, again at will. Perhaps I move too easily from style to style, perhaps it makes my writing more difficult to understand, and ultimately less rewarding. I like to think it makes it more cerebral, but I certainly cannot say; only you, the noble reader, can judge most accurately the results. However, being a writer isn't all glory and bombshells. There is a curse that writers suffer from. I was never able to put words to it until Neil Gaiman exposed it in his subtle British style: "I'd fall in love, or fall in lust. And at the height of my passion, I would think, 'So this is how it feels,' and I would tie it up in pretty words. I watched my life as if it were happening to someone else." That is beyond true, in my experience. Everything that happens to me, happens to me as if there is a small camera behind me, and I'm watching, dissecting, analyzing. When my grandfather died in 1996, I didn't cry. I remember a lot of other people crying, some only two years older than myself, but I didn't cry. I felt bad, like I should be crying, but I was too absorbed in watching their sadness. Then, when my great-aunt died in 2001, I said to myself, "finally, I can cry like they cried." And I did, and I understood the sadness of a relative's death. I imagine everything in my head as if it were prose, okay, how would I describe this feeling of nostalgia, as I sit here on the beach in Montauk, watching the ocean, this fabled ocean, this grand and glorious example of Mother Nature which has caressed me and punished me, how do I explain that this place is my youth, I can only be young again here, I can only understand my youth through the prism of the soft sand and dune-like cliffs, big empty rich houses and never-ending one-lane highways. Montauk is a topic for another day, but you should know that it is the physical embodiment of my childhood, and that when I die, I want to die there, looking out over the sloping hills, the shrewdly majestic lighthouse, and cheap seafood. I want my soul to merge with that place, I want to become one with Montauk, forever a child lost on a hot white beach, imagining adventures with my cousin, creating extravagant sandcastles, and getting swept away by that insistent post-Hurricane rip tide, swept away, fine, this time I will go with you, this time I won't swim back to shore, you can have me, finally, I am yours.

This is a Letter, This is Another, This is a Third. Now Start a Blog.

28 October 2006

Arsenal 1-1 Everton

Cahill 10' (A)
van Persie 70' (F)

It's impossible to deny the absurd proliferation of blogs that has occurred in the last year. As some people find their way awkwardly into the spotlight as a result of their personal lives, others figure that it's a cheap and easy way to potentially get in the news as well. Of course, there's also a sense of community, and that creates a breach between the telling of private things and the revelation of those private things to all who are bored enough to read your blog. All bloggers know the story of Jessica Cutler, the Washingtonienne, who charted her personal crusade to sex up the Capitol via the internet. Sure she's getting sued, but she's also in talks with HBO and Disney to make a television serial about her antics. So everyone thinks, if I can get a deal with HBO just by talking about sex, well fuck, where do I sign up? There are other ways to get noticed via the internet, as well. LonelyGirl15, the Numa-Numa dude, MySpace; everything is an avenue to sell yourself, or what you present as yourself. The fact that some people achieve success out of the internet doesn't fascinate me; that just makes sense. What does fascinate me is that the internet presents an arena where you consciously cultivate your identity, pruning it like a fine row of hedges, until you're simply an avatar backed by bands and movies and books. For some people, this is nothing new. The popular girls back in ninth grade realized that life is often about how you present yourself, and you can alter that by changing your clothes, your hairstyle, your makeup. But identity is more than just immediate, visual presentation. It is also about how you define yourself: what music you listen to, what colors do you adore, what's your favorite food, do you want to travel, does history fascinate you, do you like oak wood, do you like wood at all, maybe you don't give two shits about wood, what about the environment, do you drive a Hummer, do you like giving hummers, do you like getting hummers, do you hum when you shower, do you hate showering, are you a smelly fucking bastard? Identity is such a finely-tuned thing that we rarely think much about it beyond our physical presence. But when you sign up for MySpace, suddenly you have to put your identity into words: okay, well, I like the movie Music from Another Room... but do I want hot 20somethings seeing that on my profile? They'll probably think I'm lame. So all right, that's off the list. I've altered my identity at a very important focal point: I like romantic comedies, which tells you something about who I am, but I'll be damned if anyone on the internet is going to know that (this blog aside!). But that's only the first step. I can lie about my height, my relationship status, what I'm doing with my life, who I want to meet. Even your top 8 reflects who you are. Do you put a lot of close friends, hot people, or bands up there? The internet demands us to answer the question of how we want people to see us. These few choice words then define us, in the eyes of other people. Isn't that fucking weird? Two sentences that I write out of boredom will have a huge effect on who talks to me and who doesn't. But the process is also self-reflexive: suddenly I start to take on the characterics of my internet personality. I haven't watched a romantic comedy in at least a year. I start uttering the same, absurd non-sequitors that I wrote on my profile. Is my avatar becoming me, or am I becoming it? My identity is blurred by my own self-definition. I worry constantly that I am simply turning into my representation of my self, that my actual self is slowly dying from lack of attention. This worry reaches a fever pitch when I am interacting in real life and it occurs to me that I will need to change my profile, upon finding a new band to like, reading a new book, watching a good movie, getting a girlfriend, moving out of my house, getting a new job. I get excited that my profile will change, that my life will appear dynamic, that things are happening to me! I am not just some lump who sits in front of his computer or the TV, I am a person, look, look, I am living oh I am living life and it is so wonderful. The flip side of this coin is that I see other people are living too, or at least, that they're pretending to live. I'm obsessed with my own identity, but I'm also obsessed with interacting with other people's identities. I check their profiles: has anything changed? If so, is it worth commenting on? People I don't see much now that I'm out of school and we're all slowly going our own way, the only chance I have to stay up-to-date on their lives is by looking online, while praying to the highest power known to man that they are just as obsessed about their identity, that their manifestation of their selves is also becoming them, and that we are all merging on the internet in a mess of labels and definitions, souls removed as they are unnecessary. We roam the internet as soulless personalities, a lump of tags and categories, interacting in banal ways with ephemeral changes in nomenclature.

And We Grow Up

24 October 2006

West Brom 0-2 Arsenal (Carling Cup)

Aliadiere 34' (pk)
Aliadiere 49'

This was Arsenal’s first game in the 06/07 Carling Cup, and back in late October, it felt at least kind of pointless—I’d rather the Gunners get some rest than fight for a cup that is only slightly important. Of course, now they’re in the semifinals and I’m getting dreams of silverware, but rest might have helped our hopes of taking the league. It’s nice to have the chance to salvage a season that will probably yield no results otherwise, even though it took me about a year and a half to understand how the Carling Cup related to the rest of the football played in England (and the fact that is the Littlewoods Cup that Hornby mentions and the League Cup that history mentions). The question is, is the Carling Cup worth it? I say yes, for a couple of reasons. One, damn it, I’d like to win something. I don’t really give two shits what it is, if Arsenal wins something, I’m happy. Two, coaches often put younger players out to play for the earlier rounds, and you can’t buy that kind of experiences. This part of the season, if I recall, was absurdly aggravating. Arsenal would win a game, then they’d lose or draw a game, and I was just left watching as Manchester United continued to put most distance between us and them on the league table. Henry went on the injured list around this time as well, which I interpreted as the sign of the end times. Instead, it turned into a great boon. The younger players, like Persie, Adebayor, and Walcott, were put on the field a lot more and had to mature very fast. It was shaky for a while, but they’re allstars these days; with Henry’s return in recent weeks, I feel like we’re unstoppable. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Late October. I spent a lot of this time in a general funk; I was too tired to write, and I felt increasingly lonely as the reality of moving out of my mom’s house really sank in. This funk can attribute to why I stopped working on this project for a few months: I was tapped out of ideas and energy. However, the last few weeks have been the exact opposite; I’m writing more, thanks to Alcova, and I’m entering my first real relationship, a thing I’ve danced around for years. It hasn’t been for a lack of trying, although I’ve never been on to confidently pursue a girl that I’m interested in. A combination of factors have led to this lack of romance: a fear of commitment, and some deep-rooted sexual insecurities. The fear of commitment doesn’t always enter the equation, but sometimes I worry that it is the yin to the yang of my attraction to that which I cannot have. It’s a complex web of desires that I don’t fully understand, and has often kept me from being happy. I’ve realized at various points that the right girl would come along and that stuff would go out the window, but when you’re crushing on someone, those neuroses press upon your soul like a two-ton weight. It’s what I call the Eternal Sunshine dilemma and epiphany, in obvious reference to the film (my girlfriend is now rolling her eyes and skipping to the next paragraph because I’ve definitely already told her this). My desire for happiness is weighed against my fear of sadness: at what point do I figure that the happiness I’ll experience is worth any sadness I might experience? The epiphany then, happens with the right girl—the happiness with her is worth any potential sadness. You just kind of stop caring about the outcome, because right now is so amazing. While it sounds like an easy mindset to achieve (you’re basically just telling your brain to shut up and stop overanalyzing), it is surprisingly difficult. I tried for a number of years to see life this way, but I just couldn’t. A girl would be interested in me and I would panic and avoid her and kill whatever was blossoming. Somehow though, this time, my brain shrugged its shoulders and didn’t say anything, almost like it was finally letting me have a relationship. My neuroses and anxieties subsided and I find myself in my first committed relationship with a girl I really dig. Perhaps I drank enough liquor that I killed the neurotic part of my brain. Wouldn’t that be cool?

New Years Resentments

22 October 2006

Reading 0-4 Arsenal

Henry 1'
Hleb 39'
van Persie 49'
Henry 70' (pk)

I don't know why, but I love seeing Hleb score goals. I love seeing van Persie do it too (and Rosicky, God bless him, whenever he finds the back of the net my week is golden). Maybe it's the thrill of watching people work within Thierry's majesty (quite literally in this case, as their goals were bookended by his dynamism). He creates an atmosphere, a frame of victory, that the others can suddenly blossom within. Only a handful of players, only a handful of people can truly foster such growth, and Thierry Henry is such a man. It's like putting a greased cog into an old rickety machine: suddenly, things work again, better than ever. Similarly, when making any peice of art, a frame is not necessary but it helps the system of the art function. Structure is both critical and not; the results from both are worthwhile. A player like Thierry on a football team fashions a machine for scoring goals and fluid football, but on the opposite side when you lack such an integral part and somehow it all still comes together, what you are left with is just as valuable if not more. Undoubtedly, having that centerpiece makes everything work effortlessly, and you end up with music like The Supremes. Gorgeous, sure, but gorgeous in an expected way. When you break the form and create something just as gorgeous, the effects are beyond the expected. They are stunning and shocking and they change things. Any right-minded artist is seeking this balance, the balance of form beyond form. Of course, as soon as that is achieved, a new form is established, society adapts to the stretched boundaries. This is the goal of most artists: using their voice and what they have to say, society reacts and accepts their views. They have shifted society. Every goal I have relates to this. I want to write books that similarily reference old forms of novels but advance them to a stage that was invisible when they were written. I want to write Tolstoy in the 21st Century, I want to extrapolate his creations to post-modern schizophrenia. My novel is aiming directly at this intention. I have an elaborate web of characters interacting with contemporary concerns, but there is a missing element, and I'm not sure what it is. I like what the novel is, in my head at least, and I like where it ends up, or where I think it ends up, but it does not yet break forms in a way I find inherent to what I was describing before. There's nothing Punk Rock about it. I am writing from the New Year, from 2007, and I am looking back to this football game in late October. This game was actually played the day before I got my current job, as an editorial assistant. The job weighs upon me everyday. They just kind of gave it to me; I was entering data for them, they saw my resume and gave me an office complete with a fancier job title. I figure they'll wake up someday and go, "wait, shit, why'd we give the job to this joker? Get him out of there!" And I'll be out on my ass. I save money like I'm about to buy a car because of this: I foresee the months I'll have no job and am scrounging around desperately for any kind of sustenance. As a result of a steady gig and my own apartment, I've settled into an alarming routine: alarming in the sense that I feel real life seeping into my world. The fears I was expressing back in October 2006 have slowly come to fruition. I get drunk on the weekends and whenever I feel like it's not a sign of alcoholism during the week, but my crazy antics of college have disappeared like an old man's sex drive. I guess it's impossible to avoid the fact that real life is here; I can't get black-out drunk and run around with a pipe breaking windows because there are, at least more expectedly, consequences here whereas in college they seemed very abstract and removed. I never even really figured I'd get caught. But now, Jesus, I'm terrified when I throw a cigarette out my car for fear of a littering ticket. Oh responsibility, social expectations, what have you done to the carefree personality I cultivated in college? He is gone, I expect, never to return. So I turn into my parents, who laugh and say, "yeah, we used to get drunk and have crazy times."

Unnecessary Rambling

17 October 2006
CSKA Moscow 1-0 Arsenal
Carvalho 24'

My writing project Alcova has become a mess of sorts. Perhaps the foremost problem that has led to its current state of confusion was that I did not open with a clear goal in mind, except to write. I thought that was a good thing for a while, indeed, the formula seemed ingenius. I quit so many projects out of boredom, or laziness, but I am now encountering a new problem: complete perplexity as to what I'm doing with it. I originally wanted it to be a distantly viewed history lesson. Telos, the main character, was to be some grand warrior who conquered the universe and when that happened, he realizes that all he has conquered is himself. Who knows, maybe that story will still come out of this. I can see hints of it swirling around what I write, but each entry seems to put that goal further and further out of any logical reach. But another problem found in the formula I devised is the conciseness each entry demands. As most entries comprise one page, there is a considerable struggle with distance from the story. The first chapter was about as distant as I had wanted, with some entries covering periods of two months time. Of course, this approach, engaging long spans of time, suggests reasonable knowledge of long-term goals within the story, of which I had none. I created a love story that spans a year and dispatched it within eleven pages: mild success. Then, in chapter two, I move Telos to a new city and find each entry discussing only one day at a time. I had suddenly moved in very close, a side-effect of my desire to incorporate interesting characters (all of whom are allusions to history or fiction). I view this second chapter as a pretty sound failure, and by the end of it, I was questioning what I was doing with Alcova at all. So in the third chapter I tried to move back a little more, but in a different way. This isn't a grand historical epic, which is perhaps what I should have just fucking written, it would have been a lot easier. I am essentially writing a novel one day and one page at a time. I needed some inspiration, and I looked to a familiar source: TS Eliot. The titles of the third chapter reflect this, as they are all quotes from The Waste Land. Furthermore, I made the writing more psychological and less physical. Instead of watching Telos go on a vision quest, instead of watching him starve, I described the starvation eating his soul. The chapter in fact watches him have two mental breakdowns; the first is brought on by his long journey south, and the second is brought on by his desire to challenge himself. I found the third chapter more successful than the second, but it can't really compare to the first. When I finished Chapter 3, my approach to Alcova had changed massively: it has become an exploration of Telos's psyche, and the journey that his Self goes through (which was to be metaphorically represented by his physical journey, but by the end of Chapter 2 I realized this would become a tiresome and repititious trope). However, I think this might be a good evolution. The introduction, the first three pages I wrote, explained that this project was to watch as a young man fought his perception of reality. By shedding my dependence on his physical story, I can more accurately explore his psychological changes. But now I am wrestling with those changes. The Waste Land led me to read some Hindu texts, and I found them very inspiring; such that I thought they would provide good material for Telos to interact with. Chapter 4 has, so far, been entirely discussion of basic Hindu concepts--simply implying that Telos is now studying Hindu books, or something. While the voice of Alcova has changed drastically over the course of the four chapters, I can see where it is all going, kind of. After this chapter, Telos will return home, and from there to Damascus, and he will have to confront his past with Cavillace and Syme. I don't know where I want it to go from there, however. I still envision that great moment, at the end of Alcova, where Telos is Lord of Everything, and he reaches "the end of the universe and everything" only to find himself. At the very bottom of it all, my struggle with Alcova is parallel to Telos's struggle with his world. Maybe I will only understand Alcova when I have finished it, similar to when Telos only understands the universe when he can see the entire expanse beneath him. When I imagine that, I know that this project will be worth it. Maybe I won't understand Alcova ever, but if I can manage to climb to the peak, if I can get to "the end of it," maybe I will realize that understanding isn't necessary. If I can just fucking finish it, I feel like it will be worth it no matter the outcome. If I get it, if I don't, I'll at least take experience away from the whole thing.