Writing in the Margins

Last night I dreamed I was at a cushy seaside resort with David Foster Wallace. At one point, he was handing out presents to everyone and he gave me a notebook - one of those lined composition types. When I opened it, I found color vacation shots of DFW relaxing by the pool and sitting at various tables in the restaurant. All were in fairly extreme close-up, so the frame was filled with either his head or shots of his arms extending out of the frame. These photos had an over-exposed quality to them, so invariably DFW was always washed out or in the center of some serious flash resonance. Of course there was writing. Not on every page. More like randomly distributed throughout. It appeared in neat, indecipherable columns of blue ink, sometimes on either side of the page so there was clear space in the middle or in three, four, and five column groupings that left a little space between to write. There was the occasional blank page.

'This is very kind of you, but don't you need this?'
'No. It's for you. I want you to have it.'
'Thank you. I'm not sure...'
'Write.'
'Write?'
'I left space in there for you to write.'

Infinite Jest: Facts are useless in emergencies

As I contemplate the "facts" presented in Infinite Jest, this song springs to mind.



Lost my shape-trying to act casual!
Cant stop-i might end up in the hospital
I'm changing my shape-i feel like an accident
Theyre back!-to explain their experience

Isn't it weird/looks too obscure to me
Wasting away/and that was their policy

I'm ready to leave-i push the fact in front of me
Facts lost-facts are never what they seem to be
Nothing there!-no information left of any kind
Lifting my head-looking for danger signs

There was a line/there was a formula
Sharp as a knife/facts cut a hole in us
There was a line/there was a forula
Sharp as a knife/facts cut a hole in us

I'm still waiting...I'm still waiting...I'm still waiting...
I'm still waiting...I'm still waiting...I'm still waiting...
I'm still waiting...I'm still waiting...
The feeling returns/whenever we close out eyes
Lifting my head/looking around inside

The island of doubt-its like the taste of medicine
Working by hindsight-got the message from the oxygen
Making a list-find the cost of opportunity
Doing it right-facts are useless in emergencies

The feeling returns/whenever we close out eyes
Lifting my head/looking around inside.

Facts are simple and facts are straight
Facts are lazy and facts are late
Facts all come with points of view
Facts don't do what I want them to
Facts just twist the truth around
Facts are living turned inside out
Facts are getting the best of them
Facts are nothing on the face of things
Facts don't stain the furniture
Facts go out and slam the door
Facts are written all over your face
Facts continue to change their shape

I'm still waiting...I'm still waiting...I'm still waiting...
I'm still waiting...I'm still waiting...I'm still waiting...
I'm still waiting...I'm still waiting...

Infinite Jest: Oldish Charlie Rose Discussion with DFW, Mark Leyner, Jonathan Franzen

Found this video this morning. Discussion centers around contemporary fiction. Starts @ 36:26 or go here. My favorite quote comes from Charlie Rose referencing Infinite Jest:

"This book is known to be complicated and long...compared even to the Internet."

You can read that sentence a couple of ways:

1. Wow. This is a huge, complicated book. Longer and more complicated than the Internet.
2. Wow. This is a huge, complicated book. In it's complexity, it's been compared to the Internet.

Yeah, the Internet is complex, but the comparison doesn't fly completely. I'm wondering if maybe Charlie really meant the book is like the World Wide Web (as in it's hypertextual). Because that I completely agree with. Read this essay and you can get a sense of what I mean. All those little footnote pop-ups make the essay seem ready-made for digital media. But the book is also hypertextual in another sense, it's in conversation with other texts - Hamlet, Brothers Karamozov, Wittegenstein, etc.

Inifinite Jest: Examples of the Infinite - Joyce

Last and crowning torture of all the tortures of that awful place is the eternity of hell. Eternity! O, dread and dire word. Eternity! What mind of man can understand it? And remember, it is an eternity of pain. Even though the pains of hell were not so terrible as they are, yet they would become infinite, as they are destined to last for ever. But while they are everlasting they are at the same time, as you know, intolerably intense, unbearably extensive. To bear even the sting of an insect for all eternity would be a dreadful torment. What must it be, then, to bear the manifold tortures of hell for ever? For ever! For all eternity! Not for a year or for an age but for ever. Try to imagine the awful meaning of this. You have often seen the sand on the seashore. How fine are its tiny grains! And how many of those tiny little grains go to make up the small handful which a child grasps in its play. Now imagine a mountain of that sand, a million miles high, reaching from the earth to the farthest heavens, and a million miles broad, extending to remotest space, and a million miles in thickness: and imagine such an enormous mass of countless particles of sand multiplied as often as there are leaves in the forest, drops of water in the mighty ocean, feathers on birds, scales on fish, hairs on animals, atoms in the vast expanse of the air: and imagine that at the end of every million years a little bird came to that mountain and carried away in its beak a tiny grain of that sand. How many millions upon millions of centuries would pass before that bird had carried away even a square foot of that mountain, how many eons upon eons of ages before it had carried away all? Yet at the end of that immense stretch of time not even one instant of eternity could be said to have ended. At the end of all those billions and trillions of years eternity would have scarcely begun. And if that mountain rose again after it had been all carried away, and if the bird came again and carried it all away again grain by grain: and if it so rose and sank as many times as there are stars in the sky, atoms in the air, drops of water in the sea, leaves on the trees, feathers upon birds, scales upon fish, hairs upon animals, at the end of all those innumerable risings and sinkings of that immeasurably vast mountain not one single instant of eternity could be said to have ended; even then, at the end of such a period, after that eon of time the mere thought of which makes our very brain reel dizzily, eternity would have scarcely begun. - James Joyce, Portrait of the Artist As A Young Man

Infinite Jest: Ass in Gear Time

By today's Infinite Summer Schedule I should be on page 210, which also happens to be the exact number of unopened emails currently in my inbox. How does this happen? Magic.

I'm on page 89, reading FN 304 - the 8 page note regarding the "infamous Assassins des Fauteuils Rollents." Part of me says, hey you've read the book before and because you've read the book before, you've also already been asked by DFW to read FN 304 several times and complied. Part of me says, shut up and read.

Working up a couple of posts regarding the reading so far, but those have been pushed aside by all the amazing progress I'm making on my thesis. Not time to chill the champagne yet, but soon. Soon.

Note To Self: You don't need a co-pilot or what I've learned about life (and art) in the past 6 months

I want to talk a little about collaboration. When it works it's a beautiful thing, no? When it doesn't, it can be a soul-sucking nightmare or like beating yourself with a hammer. And that's on a good day.

I'm was in a beat yourself with a hammer bordering on soul-sucking situation a few months ago. How did I get there? Because I don't learn. I think that somewhere along the line the skies will part and the person who is being resistant to the process will suddenly see the light. I'm not talking about agreement here. I'm talking about accepting the central thesis of collaboration: that by working together you can create something larger than any one person. That you work for the group, not for yourself. That the creative environment is for the group, not necessarily for each individual. Can there be a place where an artist’s individual needs and abilities meet and find balance within the collaborative experience and if not balance, then at least an angle of repose? Granted, this position of repose might be one little corner of the sky where you don't feel at risk or it might be a a hand hold on the side of a mountain in the midst of chaos that for this moment in time, in spite of uncertainty, represents the best choice, the most reasonable solution.

Unless you don't buy into the whole idea to begin with. Which usually becomes evident. It's something that can be exposed in auditions and, if not then, or if you choose to ignore the signs and cast anyway, will soon become apparent in the rehearsal process. And then, sometimes - a person will flat out tell you that they'd rather not collaborate or maybe they don't realize where their push back is.

And, in the past, I've always held out hope for those people. I've always worked to find ways to engage with them where they are. And I guess I still will. But somehow I've got to learn to do it without taking it personally or making it personal. I don't have the energy for that anymore. I've also realized that maybe my trying to engage creates more resistance. Because I'm still working from the angle that my way is right, eh? If a person doesn't buy the idea of collaboration, not much point in trying to convince them or convincing yourself you're going to win them over somehow. What are the options? Accepting what they can do? Check. And...and...move on. Next.

When you meet resistance what do you do? How do you handle it?

NYC: 2 for 1 Tix to Siti Company's Radio Macbeth

Use the code RADIO.
Purchase online here or call (212) 854-7799
TICKETS: $20, $10 for students with valid ID.

Friday, July 10 and Saturday, July 11 @ 8 p.m.
Sunday, July 12 @ 2 p.m.

Miller Theatre @ Columbia University, 2960 Broadway (at 116th Street)

Must Read for the Day

Andy @ Culturebot has posted an insightful essay on the value of live performance in a culture that is becoming more permeated by technology .

Deep Reading and the Fetishization of Live Experience

...people will become alternatively literate. They will be able to create and interpret visual and aural media with ever-greater ease; and “deep reading” – the ability to created and process complex sentences and complicated trains of thought, to construct and deconstruct reality through semantics and semiotics and convey your findings – will wane. Without the words to describe nuanced states of emotion or states of being, without the words to convey complicated thoughts, those thoughts and emotions might vanish. Or they may only be the province of those who can process them. The vast majority of people will become subject to only the roughest and broadest stimuli, they will respond only to the most obvious sensations and react with the broadest, simplest emotions.

In the most basic equation this means that audiences for unmediated live performance may very well diminish, at least as we offer those experiences in the current context. Big Broadway shows and middlebrow entertainment that offers easily digestible experiences will face one set of challenges but truly challenging live performance will be facing an almost existential threat as audiences wither and vanish.

This only sounds grim because it reflects some of the challenges we're facing right now. But I find inspiration in the latter part of the essay which discusses the opportunities we have for exploring narrativity and presentation.