I have no idea what it says about me that I love stuff like this so much. Okay…maybe I do know what it says about me: that I’m an OCD-ridden freak who enjoys living in the illusion that life will be perfect once everything is neatly organized.
Still, I think this stuff is pretty cool: re-purposing common household items. My favorite is the repurposed CD case.
When we got the results of the Iowa caucus, I felt the things I was supposed to feel: excitement, vindication, enthusiasm, and fear. Fear of Mike Huckabee, primarily, but also fear that if the campaign a year ahead of us was between a black man from Chicago with a foreign name and a Baptist preachers from Arkansas, we may not have seen the end of the culture wars that have spoiled my young adulthood.
But there was another emotion present, more interesting than any of those: tremendous anxiety for MYSELF. It was so disturbing that I didn’t tell my wife about it for several days. An unfamiliar anxiety, but not entirely remote. It was that night-before-the-S.A.T. anxiety. It was applying-to-college anxiety. It was first-real-job anxiety. Maybe even will-she-marry-me anxiety. In other words, it was stepping-off-into-maturity anxiety.
Barack Obama is one year younger than me. We are both almost Baby Boomers, but not. This isn’t the first time that someone our age has done something world-changing, but it’s the first time someone our age has done THIS.
You know what that test-taking anxiety really is, don’t you? I wasn’t afraid of a poor performance. I was terrified, in fact, that I would do WELL on the test.
I became an adult when I figured this out.
This is what an adult knows that a child doesn’t: a good performance on a test only assures the imminent arrival of other, much more difficult tests. I was scared of the S.A.T. because it promised college. I was anxious about college because it opened the possibility of a demanding career. I was terrified of a career because it meant that one day…I might have to decide the fate of my country.
You think I’m kidding? Maybe what I admire most about Barack Obama is his willingness to tell the truth. About himself, primarily, but also the truth about us all. He uses words like “we,” he talks about “this moment in history,” not because those phrases make us comfortable, but because they are the truth.
I’ve got to decide if I’m ready for what I’m now certain is coming: the candidacy of Barack Obama. But don’t think that such a wonderful event will solve anything or complete anything or even make the world a better place. We can talk about what it will mean to have the son of a Kenyan in the White House (and I will). We can talk about what it will mean that an interracial face will lead the world (and I will). But those aren’t the REAL issues, which is why Senator Obama doesn’t speak about them so much himself.
The real issue is whether we’re all ready to grow up.
Growing up is not about power – it’s about sacrifice. It’s not about perfect faith – it’s about stumbling, incomplete faith. It’s REALLY not about proceeding in airtight confidence of perfect righteousness – it’s about the completely absurd instinct that compromise and love of our fellows will somehow get us through.
I have spent a long time waiting for power and certainty to be conferred on me so tht I might meet the challenges of my life. The news from that precinct has not been good. While I was busy wondering how to avoid being a citizen of his beautiful but terrified nation, we lashed out at the rest of the world, betraying everywhere our most sacred principles.
The news from other precincts, however, has been VERY good. Out of the crucible of this awful decade, a leader has emerged: maybe Barack Obama IS inexperienced and charismatic and full of the naive and unsupportable belief that America is still a great country and capable of great things, but I think I’m just about as inexperienced and charismatic and naive enough myself to support him with all my heart and soul.
And I will never call his vision of America – a nation innovative and undivided, a nation whose huge power can be wielded for the good of all nations – a fantasy. It is not a fantasy: it is what I pray for when I’m holding my wife and son. It is the true flag that I pledge allegiance to. And, from now on, it is how I will vote.
I took every woman I dated in high school to see The Last Waltz, Martin Scorcese’s great concert movie about the last performance of The Band. It was my standard first date. I believe I saw the film ten times. When something works, I say, just keep doing it.
After my parents’ split I spent summers in my father’s cabinet shop. Dad’s life had been so blasted by divorce and quitting drinking that sometimes it hurt just to look at him. One day he told me that he’d gone to see The Last Waltz, my favorite movie for the entirety of high school.
“Alone?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he said.
“Why?” I asked.
“Because you told me it was good.”
I turned away and went back to work. He was telling me about fifteen hundred things, and I was hearing them all. He was saying how lonely he was. He was saying how much everything hurt. He was saying that he wanted to be my friend, but he didn’t feel like he could insist on it, after all he’d done to make my life difficult.
I should have wrapped him in my arms. I should have grabbed him right then and taken him to a movie. The fact that I didn’t is a precious gift to me now: I hope I remember every day that failure and what it could have meant to both of us.
I have a bad opinion of online study programs. I’m not sure why. The only program that I’ve ever been involved with — at UCLA Extension — was AMAZING. I took a screenwriting workshop there with Steve Duncan which transformed my relationship to narrative structure. I also taught a course in their program which convinced me that they are extremely serious about maintaining a high level of instruction. If you’re interested in online study, check them out.
Dear Joe Writer,
What’s the deal with writing in cafés? I’ve been afraid to try it because I don’t know what the rules are. Isn’t writing in cafés just about sex? Isn’t it just an excuse to look cool and attract playmates? What’s the best way to focus with so many people around you? What do you do when some persistent person (possibly even an attractive person who wants to sleep with you) won’t take no for an answer and continues to intrude on your workspace?
Sincerely,
Looking-Through-The-Starbucks-Window
Dear Looking-Through-The-Window:
I have to admit to myself, sadly, that my days of writing in cafés may be over. It’s a young man’s game, and I’ve got a family now, so, no matter what my chronological age, I am no longer a young man. Yes, I will dip back into it from time to time, but it will be as a once great athlete shows up for an autograph signing or a fantasy camp. It’s now time to pass on my skills.
Before I begin, I would like to dispel a few misconceptions about writing in cafés. It’s so easy to misunderstand. Are we – the people who write in cafés – poseurs? The answer is complicated. Yes, we are poseurs to the extent that we enjoy doing our work in front of other people. And, no, we are not poseurs in the sense that any real accomplishment as a café writer depends on rejecting the idea of performance entirely.
Is this a paradox? Yes. But, for more than a decade, it was one of the most delightful paradoxes of my life.
There are two things I hate about writing: paperwork and being alone. There’s not much I can do about the paperwork, but the being alone part got solved when the world, about fifteen years ago, seemed to be suddenly filled with public places where I could write. With the advent of laptops and Starbucks, a whole new world opened for me.
Isn’t writing in cafés just about sex? Isn’t it just an excuse to look cool and attract playmates?
Ah, yes, this is the heart of the paradox. The yes that is no, the no that is stop-by-my-table-and-see-me-sometime. If you’re trying to get laid by writing in a café, you won’t. You won’t get any writing done, either. If you’re trying to write – that is, keeping people away from you as much as possible, perfecting a total concentration on your work, discouraging even the innocent “you mind if I share this outlet with you?” then you will probably get some sweet stuff from time to time. Because, in that case, you will be a real writer, and for some reason real writers are kind of attractive.
What’s the best way to focus with so many people around you?
This is pretty much the same thing I’m saying in response to question #1 – the way out is in, the way in is out. To the extent that you can actually see yourself as a brilliant writer doing brilliant work – and actually be the public version of that person – then the people around you will aid you in your concentration. On the other hand, try seeing yourself as a poseur, sitting in a Starbucks trying to attract women by pretending that you’re a writer. If you’re anything like me, you’ll run screaming from that image with such force that you’ll actually get some good work done.
What do you do when some persistent person (possibly even an attractive person who wants to sleep with you) won’t take no for an answer and continues to intrude on your workspace?
Okay, then, this is the graduate seminar, isn’t it? This was one of the greatest epiphanies of my life: sexual opportunity will still find you if you push it away, but your work will not get done if you abandon it to court sexual opportunity. This is where many fail, but also where many great careers are launched: you must have faith that someone who wants to sleep with you because you’re a writer in a café will only want to sleep with you more because you’re a writer in a café who can’t be bothered with them because you are too busy actually being a writer in a café.
Yours,
Joe Writer
These sentences will not leave my mind. That’s either because they are so damn well-written or because they scare the crap out of me.
“The next president must do one thing, and one thing only, if he is to be judged a success: He must prevent al Qaida, or an al Qaida imitator, from gaining control of a nuclear device and detonating it in America. Many proliferation experts I have spoken to judge the chance of such a detonation to be as high as 50 percent in the next 10 years. Only technical complications prevent al Qaida from executing a nuclear attack today. The nuclear destruction of Lower Manhattan, or downtown Washington, would cause the deaths of thousands, or hundreds of thousands: a catastrophic depression; the reversal of globalization; a permanent climate of fear in the West; and the comprehensive repudiation of America’s culture of civil liberties.”
Jeffrey Goldberg in The New York Times
Just in case you thought my sweet old uncle William James doesn’t still have it: I came across this quote when I opened an old Selected Papers on Philosophy. At the exact moment my eyes came across these words, my son was dancing gleefully to Blood on the Tracks.
“A bill of fare with one real raisin on it instead of the word ‘raisin,’ with one real egg instead of the word ‘egg,’ might be an inadequate meal, but it would at least be a commencement of reality.”
Dear Joe Writer:
What’s the deal with writers anyway? Are they all just drunks and drug addicts and people you wouldn’t want to date? Why don’t they all just get real jobs and stop spending all our our money spreading feces all over themselves and pickling religious icons in urine.
Wants To Know in Ohio
Dear Wants To Know:
Writers are the voice of our best selves. They are, as Joyce said, the “uncreated conscience of [our] race.” The rest of the world needs us desperately for reasons that I will go into once I’ve thought a few up. Although I myself have spent a fair amount of time spreading feces and pickling religious icons in urine, you’re getting writers confused with artists. Artists are scumbags. Given a choice between dating an artist or a writer, you always want to go with … a rich film producer with several lovers on the side who will leave you alone to spend his money.
Yours,
Joe Writer
Mike Nichols, a party at Jane Fonda’s house, meeting Buck Henry:
In the middle of the party, and yet, standing at a cocked eyebrow’s distance from it, was Mike Nichols. Once again an immigrant in a new land, he surveyed the tribal rituals, the lapses of etiquette, the deferences and courtesies and small humiliations of this hothouse of West Coast privilege and restlessness, and filed them away from future use. At one point in the evening, he wandered from the crowd and found himself under the canopy of a huge tree around which part of the tent had been set up. A small knot of revelers was slouched around the trunk, and when Nichols approached, one of them looked up at him and said, “Are you having a good time in L.A., Mike?”
Nichols responded in his slow deadpan, “Yes. Here under the shadow of this great tree, I have found peace.”
The laugh he got came from Buck Henry.
From Pictures at a Revolution By Mark Harris
Warren Beatty on casting:
“Casting is destiny,” says Warren Beatty. “Particularly in movies, because casting is character — and character is plot. Casting really controls story. One guy would do a thing, another guy wouldn’t. And if you’re the guy in the close-up, character acting isn’t going to help — you either are that guy, or you aren’t.”
From Pictures at a Revolution By Mark Harris