DonaMajicShow

Homosexuality, Metrosexuality, Normality & Absurdity

During my shift at OG the other day, I noticed a table of four males dressed considerably well. Not only were their clothes matching and looked as though bought from Banana Republic or Forever Twenty-One, but they each had scarves, sweater vests, earrings, stylized hair, and scented perfume that permeated the atmosphere. In addition, their mannerisms were very feminine and each of them had lisps. My first assumption was that they were all homosexuals, but then I thought about it a little more and reasoned that they could have been metrosexuals. If I were to polarize the scale from certainty, probability, possibility or impossibility, I would assume that these folk fit the following probability category: metrosexual + femininity + lisp = flamboyant homosexual.

Granted that lisps and feminine mannerisms pertain more to sexual orientation, the clothing that they were wearing pertains more to gender markings. In fact, the clothing they were wearing could have easily been worn by any woman in the store.  And the mere fact that several employees I worked with made suggestive comments about this table is proof enough that this group of males had oriented themselves outside the realm of what is considered socially acceptable, at least from a Provo-cultural standpoint. After all, given the hyper-conservative nature of the city it’s not every day that you see males dressed so incredibly fashionable. If this was in California of Massuchusttes, or if these were women it would be another story. I wouldn’t think twice about it and just go about my business absent-mindedly. However, the situation proved to be an interesting thought-experiment particuarly after one of my co-workers expressed his disgust (Provo right?). So I began to wonder.

Who constructed what types of clothes would be appropriate for males and females? Why is it that when males dress extremely fashionable do we assume cases of homosexuality or metrosexuality? Clothing is not gender inherent, but a construct that society has created. And while I am not trying to suggest that I felt uncomfortable by what these males were wearing—more curious if anything—I will say that their clothing did cause me to notice them in anomalous ways. They seemed to orient themselves outside of the term “masculinity,” which then caused me to wonder what that term even meant. Well, what does it mean to be masculine? What does it mean to be feminine?

Why do I have this notion in my mind that men are supposed to be tough, rugged, deep-voiced, strong and careless of their attire, while women are supposed to be calm, gentle, sensitive, soft-voiced and overtly aware of how they physically appear? Cultural conditioning must be the answer. In the case of these four males, they had crossed over the Provo cultural stereotype and embraced the side “unsuited” for them. But who am I to say that they were in the wrong, the weird, the foreign, the strange, for one man’s soap is another man’s trash and vice versa. Now granted, of course, there should be boundaries. I’m not trying to suggest that men should start wearing high-heels and women grow mustaches, but I do find myself in an ambivalent position having not thought about these things much. In fact, I’m not quite sure where to draw the line. Hell, to be honest, if men wanted to wear high-heels and women grow mustaches, more power to ‘em.

Perhaps an interesting film could be made that reverses the stereotypical roles done in absurdist, Alice-type fashion. We saw this a lot during the 80’s with Twisted Sister, Alice Cooper, David Bowie and other glam rock artists who challenged the traditional gender constructs through deconstruction. It was a time when Freud’s “uncanny” became personified and applied by those who refused to familiarize themselves with society’s use of the word “normal.” And what is normal anyway that the Other wouldn’t identify itself with the same prejudice? What homes have we not built for ourselves that exclude in some way the homes of others? We seem to think we’re special with our traditions, our fashions, our books and our language, but the moment we exert these things with eminent conceit—as if to suggest we own a corner on normality—we place ourselves in a potentially precarious position of learning from what the “alien” has to teach us. So I can appreciate the movements of Freud, Beckett, Camus, Snider and Rose, since they are, on the one hand, playfully challenging us to think about these constructs in provocative ways, while on the other hand, could be opening doors that should remain locked. And to determine which doors to open and which to close is perhaps the greatest adventure one has to embark upon in this life, for it is the laborious task of building one’s own personalized temple .

He Wishes For the Cloths of Heaven

miianwilson:

Started #23

Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

Megane (i.e. Glasses): A film that utilizes the Power of Now

In his autobiographical novel, “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance,” Robert Pirsig and his son Chris hop on a motorcycle and head east with “plans…deliberately indefinite, more to travel than to arrive anywhere.” For them the journey holds primacy over the destination, the process over the end product. There is never a rush, never a desire to get anywhere in particular. Instead, there is patient surrender to the moment: to enjoy the ride; to feel the breeze; to gaze upon the scenery; to live in the inevitable now.  The resonation of this contemplative spirit is one that surely divides the East from the West, the still from the hectic. Granted, of course, both cultures are technologically savvy and are currently immersed within the industrial machine, there is something pensive about Eastern culture that simply understands “the talent to be here.” Not there, but here. Not there in some transcendental world beyond our grasp, but here on earth thus making heaven on earth. Perhaps this talent to be here—to be in the now—has genetically been passed down upon their lineage from the Zen masters of yore; those same monks who meditatively subdued the body and bridled those insatiable cravings to get somewhere, and get there fast.

Megane is a story not much different from what Pirsig quintessentially enlightens his readers to, or what Thom Yorke sings in The Tourist, “Hey man…slow down, slow down.” These are principles that stretch as far back as Siddhartha and the Bodi Tree and his transformation into the Buddha, but ones nevertheless that possess a timeless quality. Of this quality Pirsig writes, “The world can function without it, but life would be so dull as to be hardly worth living. In fact, it wouldn’t be worth living.” This nebulous “it”—this quality—is a way of living, a way of being; one that provides a serendipitous platform for the filmmakers of Megane to explore without reservation.

Meet Taeko, a worn-out and stressed business woman who drags along a heavy suitcase, places the world on hold and vacations at the Hamada beachside inn. It is a quirky little inn filled with quaint odds and ends and whose residents behave in less than normal ways. At least these are her first impressions. Each morning Taeko is awoken to the site of an old woman kneeling at her side, gently smiling and staring at her. An obscure musical signifier then draws her attention to the beachside where town locals practice strange “merci-exercises,” where there are “no sights to see” and where a mysterious skill called “twilighting” is embraced by the community as a daily, holy ritual. Although not much explicit character background is given about Taeko, we do know two things about her that reveal a lot of information: 1). She has come to the Hamada inn because there is no cell phone reception there, and 2). She is a professor of some sort.

We can infer from this information that she is trying to temporarily escape from the busyness of her life and just relax; to find solace from the otherwise obnoxious cell phone calls made by those who demand her time, efforts and labor in the world of industry.  She needs a rest. But ironically for Taeko, “rest” is a relative term viewed differently by the beachside locals. While we’re not quite sure what specific type of vacationing rest Taeko is looking for, we do know that the refuge she seeks at the other hotel proves farcical and labor-intensive—something she is trying to avoid. But we also initially know that “rest” for her cannot be found in the locals’ philosophy of “twilighting”—a quiet, calm and contemplative form of meditation that requires nothing more than reflection, a sense of nostalgia, and staring off into space.

It should be no surprise at first that Taeko struggles to develop what she thinks is the “skill to twilight.” After all, she has unknowingly entered a parallel world filled with alien rituals unaccustomed to the dog-eat-dog one she came from. It’s as if Hamada inn is a temple of sorts, a sanctuary, a holy place separated from the hustle and bustle of everyday living where people can come to practice the power of Now. When the revered and older resident, Sakura, quietly reflects on the beans cooking inside the pot—watching them “sleep” she says—then enlightens Taeko by saying “it’s important not to rush things,” we feel as though we’re learning something valuable. The instantiated notion here is that fast-made food is poor-tasting and creates malnourishment, while the generalized notion is that any project carelessly surged through is no project worth pursuing at all. Then, without another word, she raises a spoon full of beans to Taeko’s mouth and gently allows her to taste the fruits of her labor. They smile at each other. Taeko begins to understand the essence of twilighting. It is surrendering to what is, to become fully present in the moment so that the past ceases to have any power. It is to awaken the great stillness within, that place of unfathomable peace, and is found in Eckhart Tolle’s words, “All you really need to do is accept this moment fully. You are then at ease in the here and now and at ease with yourself.”

Twilighting is not only a spiritual practice limited to the characters extant onscreen, but also extends to the audience as they stare meditatively onto the flickering screen, trying to extract meaning through the juxtaposition of images. In this way, the film carries a rather thoughtful quality, the type that suggests that those who attempt to ponder upon the wisdom contained therein possess, like Taeko, “the talent to be here.” This maxim is much about enduring the process and duration of the film’s slow, methodical and calculated spatial and temporal relations. For example, when Sakura makes her famous shaved ice for Taeko, we actually watch her go through the meticulous motions as if the scene unraveled in real time. Although the more ill-patient, Eisenstein/MTV type crowds will beg for the scene “to be chopped up into little fragments” as Bazin would argue against, not to forget hope for minimal ellipsis to be used, we are reminded by the filmmakers that the emphasis here is on the quality of process, the quality of enjoying the journey rather than partaking of some end product.  The scene, like much of the film’s overall style, challenges the spectator’s “talent to be here.” And if we grow impatient with the films deliberately contemplative style, it might be well assumed that we have been far too saturated in consumerist forms of futurism, where the demand to receive instant gratification and mind-blowing spectacle has drowned out our ability to hear the quiet promptings of inspiration and sudden strokes of ideas.

Certainly, the film has much to enlighten us with on how to receive inspiration, how to dwell in the moment, and does so through the use of eye-glasses. Like Jesus’ renowned dictum, “those who have eyes to see, see,” Megane explores the idea of how our perceptions can be enhanced by looking at the world in different ways. When we rush from place to place and are never aware of our surroundings, let alone breathing, we lose the ability to see that heaven is already here on earth but must be awakened to. Heaven is not there, in some transcendental realm, but here, on earth. And for those who do not have the “talent to be here” must put on spiritual specks so to speak, not simply sleep-walk through their waking-state and miss out on the opportunity to adjust the focus of their perceptions, for it is in the putting on of such specks that the extraordinary is extracted from the ordinary, where a tree is not just a tree but a living, breathing entity that starts off with small and humble beginnings but grows into a majestic site for all to behold.

Megane uses Kracauer’s phrase of “redeeming reality” by showing us everyday occurrences—like a sunset or an ocean breeze—in ways that makes us stop and consider the beauty therein. Bazin even would most likely argue that the film “renders the hidden meaning in people and things,” cherishes the use of deep-space, spatial and temporal relations by relying upon the use of carefully crafted mis-en-scene as opposed to photographic expressionism, trick montage, or stylization of décor. It is a film that through the utilization of such things invites us into the text to ascertain the implications of “twilighting,” how if heaven is to be grasped we must learn to slow things down, ponder and learn to enjoy the present moment, for that’s all we ever have.

Demythologization in Physics

Physicists were born to unify two things which previously understood were different, incompatible. The truth of this is so ostensibly recognizable throughout antiquity that to doubt such would be considered absurd. Whether we’re talking about old theories’ (Aristotelian/Ptolemaic) confrontation with newer theories (Copernican Revolution), we can understand the cost of choosing the wrong unification theory. For instance, choosing the old theory here brought us into confrontation with our understanding with motion. That is, if the earth is the center of the universe then it must be in a constant state of rest while the heavens are eternally moving (changing). This did not make sense to us (nor Copernicus). The earth, like every other celestial body, was deemed as a planet. And all planets move. So how could it be that the earth, so too, wasn’t moving? Was it just because we couldn’t feel it? No. That would be too easy.

A revision needed to be made even before technology permitted our full understanding of where we were going; one that could not be determined by experiment for lack of technological advances but one that nevertheless needed to be hypothesized in order to violate Aristotle’s law that everything not on a celestial circle must come to rest. For how else could we make sense of our planet if it wasn’t like the “moving others,” but uniquely gifted as God’s center prize of stagnation? No, we needed a new theory that divorced from centuries of superstition, despite what qualms the Inquisition had and would torture us for. And thanks to Galileo’s codification of Newton’s first law of motion, we got one. The Law of Inertia: a body of matter remains in a constant state of rest unless it is disturbed by forces. Although we might not feel the earth moving, it simply means that we are all observers moving at varying speeds and cannot tell when we are at rest or not. Motion, thus, must be explained through a principle of relativity—that the distinction between motion and being is meaningful only relative to the observer.

Let us ponder upon these implications for a moment. These powerful strategies to unite centuries of off-kilter theories into rational, understandable terms means that the apparent differences in them at first glance is in fact due to the difference in perspectives of observers. What we once thought was absolute and fixed is more malleable and relative. When discoveries like Newton’s law of inertia or Einstein’s theory of relativity are in full swank—established by experiment and explained by theory—what you have is not only scientific creativity at its brink, but also a radical paradigm shift in human consciousness.  So proposals from two very different backgrounds—what we would say is today’s general relativity/quantum mechanics debate—requires a lot of explaining. But let me now extract the most significant point I’ve been building to.

The need to explain how things that are seemingly different but really the same takes enormous efforts to break down those barriers of what we once thought was fixed and absolute. This in turn comes from our insatiable desire to grasp the order extant in the universe, extant both in heaven and on earth. We’ve struggled so long with the one and the many, being and change, that we don’t know which things to preserve versus which things to let go of and progress past. In a phrase, we don’t know yet how to live and how to die. But science has always been able to make remarkable progress because heroes like Copernicus, Kepler, Newton and Kant made radical predictions of the universe before those predictions were even confirmed by scientific instruments. That is, though Kepler could not explain his own posited planetary laws, Newton could. And although Newton could not explain his three laws of motion, Kant could. But I’m thinking of another case in particular that will solidify the argument I’ve been building to. Bruno’s case.

Giordano Bruno, the famous philosopher and scientist of the fifteenth century, once postulated that the difference between the sun and the stars was a matter of perspective. In assumption, he posited them as being the same yet very far from one another—which is the reason why the stars appear so small to us and the sun so big. His hypothesis eluded to the idea that the universe was much larger than we had anticipated; a proposal at the time that was considered absurd to scientists and punishable by death to the Catholic Church. Consider now what Lee Smolin writes about Bruno’s “novel prediction”:

“Of course, this was an opportunity to make a novel prediction: If you could measure the distances of the stars, you would find they were in fact much farther away than the planets. Had it been possible to do this in Bruno’s day, he might have escaped the fire. But it was centuries before the distance to a star could be measured. What Bruno had done, in practical terms, was to make an assertion that was untestable, given the technology of the time. Bruno’s proposal conveniently put the stars at such a distance that no one could check his idea. So sometimes the need to explain how things are unified forces you to posit new hypotheses you simply cannot test.”

What does this mean? Well, one way of looking at it is that Bruno’s prediction could not be tested during his lifetime due to an insufficient amount of technology, and yet when the time came that technology was fully sufficient, his prediction was confirmed by experiment and thus added to the plethora of demythologization projects. In other words, all sciences consist of large strings of intelligent men and women who at some time during their careers (typically the height thereof) were left only to make predictions about how the universe operates. That’s it: predictions, not confirmed tests; for the blessings of scientific knowledge come only after a trial of faith. In past times, many of those predictions were considered absurd and laughable as in the case of Bruno’s sun/star postulate.

However, as soon as technology advances and future scientists pick up old theories and play with them, it suddenly seems as though the religious people’s term coined “miracle” uncannily manifests itself in the scientific realm. What was once considered “absurd,” “otherworldly,” or “fantastic,” becomes the current sciences of the day. We need look no further than the examples I’ve given to be convinced of this truth, unless of course you simply find it as pleasurable as I do to indirectly demythologize the religious community, for their claims are no more absurd than are today’s predictions about M-theory and its multiple, parallel universe postulates. Could it be, then, that science is the great mechanism to bring heaven to earth? That what prophets have “postulated”—and I use the term more as a euphemism in place of ” firmly declared”—as the distance between heaven and earth cannot as of now be measured simply because we have not advanced far enough as a race? It seems as though prophets have “conveniently put the [heavens] at such a distance that no one [can] check [their] idea[s].”

But as Smolin reminds us, “sometimes the need to explain how things are unified forces you to posit new hypotheses you simply cannot test.”

And it is here that I am reminded of the late Hugh Nibley’s words: “Time vindicates the prophets.”

Vampyr: The Mind Sees What it Wants to See

From the opening character card we learn that Allan Gray is a dreamer, an aimless wanderer “preoccupied with superstitions of centuries past” and one who embarks upon “strange adventures.” Everything that subsequently happens afterward is understood in context of this information, for we are, so to speak, inside of Allan’s otherworldly mind that confuses reality and fantasy for the duration of the film. Naturally, then, when the young occultist arrives at the haunted hotel and begins to witness odd occurrences like dancing shadows which appear to have no indexical reference to anything concrete, or when the old man enters his room and deliriously spouts “She must not die” and then leaves a package on his bed that reads “to be opened after my death,” or when strange talk of vampires circulate amongst the inhabitants of the hotel, we shouldn’t be surprised by how uncanny any of these events are.

Certainly, it is debatable to surmise which of these events is actually happening independent of Allan’s mind, versus which ones are entirely contingent upon his mind. To restate the character card, we know one thing for certain: Allan is a dreamer, one who has immersed his life in devilry, black magic and superstitions. So it could be argued that he is inviting all of these fantastical things to occur simply because his mind is looking for them; as if his ghostly experiences are a mere extension of his wild imagination.

The story’s significance of what is real and unreal drew attention to my experience with the recent film “Paranormal Activity.”  It is a film, much like Allan’s character, that diabolically invites the Other into your mind and causes you to question the reality of supernatural experiences. Of course, many Westerners might laugh at the idea of poltergeists or demon exorcising (let alone vampires), but in Latin America these things are not something strictly extant on screen but are quite familiar and frequent in everyday circumstances.  In fact, two of my brothers who served missions in Mexico were involved with several exorcisms (i.e. priesthood blessings) on family houses that were haunted with evil spirits. After watching Paranormal, I had a two hour conversation with a friend regarding certain topics addressed in the film: Ouija boards, demon possession and supernaturalism in general. As the conversation progressed, it seemed as though we were summoning some sort of dark and heavy energy around us; one that made us feel as though we had crossed into another world: shadowy and dreary.

The human mind is a powerful thing, and, like Allan, can summon otherworldly things into reality just by mere exploration and curiosity. In a phrase, the mind sees what it wants to see. It has the power to blur the line between the real and unreal, the scientifically concrete and the supernaturally fantastic. Perhaps the adrenaline I felt while watching Paranormal was the same adrenaline that excited Allan to become a dreamer in the first place, for there is something altogether ominous, fantastic yet tantalizing about transcending the world we’re currently in.

Interestingly for Allan, the ordinary world he’s chosen to transcend seems to land him in a nightmarish world he has no control over. In fact, as the story progresses it becomes increasingly more difficult to orient whose perspective we’re following. Sometimes we see things through Allan’s eyes, other times we see his fanciful mind take over like when the old man is shot by the shadowy peg leg soldier. Other times still, we see things through Allan’s alter-ego ghost as when he steps outside of his body and imagines his own coffin burial. All of these perspectives are disorienting and show that there aren’t a lot conventional sutures that occur. That is, we are rarely implicated into the spaces within the frame. I think Dreyer did this intentionally in order to make us feel as though we’re inside of Allan’s mind, one that confuses the real and unreal equally.

One scenery composition that I thought was particularly interesting was when peg legs’ shadow walks about as if it possessed autonomy, and then slowly returns to the existential peg leg in concrete reality. It appeared to foreshadow the latter end of the story when Allan’s alter-ego leaves his body and encounters the buried Allan inside the coffin. The whole sequence seemed to personify Allan’s morbid obsession with death. In the beginning of the film, we see him looking outside his window transfixed on the laymen with the scythe (a grim reaper of sorts); next we witness through Allan’s chimerical mind the death of the old man. Finally, we step into Allan’s dream-self and die alongside him. We see things through his perspective even as he is carried away in the coffin with a small glass opening that allows us to voyeur upon the churchyard and fields. Again, Allan’s character chooses to see these types of strange events. He is a mystic in search of the otherworldly and consequently is not grounded in “normal” reality.

It’s interesting to think about how whatever the mind chooses to see it becomes. If we want to see life through quixotic goggles, we will interpret most things as being transcendental while our down-to-earth friends call us romantic idealists. If we want to see life as being more than just empiricism, we will fill our lives with spiritual things while our scientist friends label us as whim-worshippers. Allan chose to see death and the fantastic all around him which ultimately landed him inside a coffin (despite its surrealist quality). He became what he devoted his attention towards. And in these ways, Vampyr is a very unique film that empowers us to see what we will, become what we will.

It is not your typical vampire film. It does not depend upon offensive gore, stylized make-up, costumes or other forms of shock value, but “emphasizes the dread of knowing the danger of curiosity” as Bruce Kawin said of the horror genre. Allan’s curiosity in black magic spurned a subjective frenzy of perspectives which inevitably invited dark forces to surface and take over his mind. He had invited the devil so to speak into his house and then lost his way. Thus, the film’s message is a compelling one: When we foster our minds to focus on something, we are choosing to invite a particular world into our life be it growth promoting or threatening. We are choosing to allow either normal or paranormal experiences to penetrate our perspectives.

The Paradox of our Time (George Carlin)

The paradox of our time in history is that

we have taller buildings but shorter tempers;

wider freeways, but narrower viewpoints.

We spend more, but have less;

we buy more, but enjoy less

We have bigger houses and smaller families,

more conveniences, but less time;

we have more degrees, but less sense;

more knowledge, but less judgement;

more experts, yet more problems,

more medicine, but less wellness.

We drink too much, smoke too much,

spend too recklessly, laugh too little,

drive too fast, get too angry,

stay up too late, get up too tired,

read too little, watch TV too much,

and pray too seldom.

We have multiplied our possessions, but reduced our values.

We talk too much, love too seldom, and hate too often.

We’ve learned how to make a living, but not a life,

we’ve added years to life not life to years.

We’ve been all the way to the moon and back,

but have trouble crossing the street to meet a new neighbor.

We conquered outer space but not inner space.

We’ve done larger things, but not better things.

We’ve cleaned up the air, but polluted the soul.

We’ve conquered the atom, but not our prejudice.

We write more, but learn less.

We plan more, but accomplish less.

We’ve learned to rush, but not to wait.

We build more computers to hold more information

to produce more copies than ever,

but we communicate less and less.

These are the times of fast foods and slow digestion;

big men and small character;

steep profits and shallow relationships.

These are the days of two incomes but more divorce,

fancier houses but broken homes.

These are days of quick trips, disposable diapers,

throw-away morality, one-night stands,

overweight bodies, and pills that do everything

from cheer to quiet, to kill.

It is a time when there is much in the show window and

nothing in the stockroom. A time when technology

can bring this letter to you, and a time when you can choose

either to share this insight, or to just hit delete.

Remember, spend some time with your loved ones,

because they are not going to be around forever.

Remember, say a kind word to someone who looks up

to you in awe, because that little person soon

will grow up and leave your side.

Remember, to give a warm hug to the one next to you,

because that is the only treasure you can give with

your heart and it doesn’t cost a cent.

Remember, to say “I Love you” to your partner and

your loved ones, but most of all mean it.

A kiss and an embrace will mend hurt when it comes

from deep inside of you.

Remember, to hold hands and cherish the moment,

for some day that person will not be there again.

Give time to Love, give time to speak, give time to

share the precious thoughts in your mind.